There are Video Conferencing (VC) solutions out there that have been around for quite some time to help you save money, energy, etc by making you travel less. However, the infrastructure setup for video conferencing is quite extensive and requires a lot of costs upfront, depending upon the number of offices and people to connect in conference through real time video technology, which an organization may not be willing to pay up.

One viable option is to transition from CapEx to OpEx model through managed VC and offload their troubles to a vendor who is responsible for providing, working and managing the VC setup for the organization at multiple locations.

The company just has to pay the vendor a rental for using the service. While the idea seems invigorating enough there are a slew of factors that need to be kept in mind while going for it. Here, we'll provide a possibly exhaustive list of things to look out for when going in for a managed VC setup.

Scalability

This is one of the major points to ponder over. Every organization has plans and hopes of growing. When that happens, the company would want to extend the current services to other parts of the company as well. This would call for a need of scalability in the solution being provided by the vendor. The company should ideally go for a solution/vendor who is able to provide scalability to the setup so that in case of a need for more end points in the solution, the vendor is able to connect them without much hassle. For this, the vendor should be able to provide services in other parts of the country, world.

Security

Security of the solution is another key aspect. It is highly critical for a company that the discussions being held on a VC are not being intercepted by unauthorized personnel or systems. Thus it is pivotal to check the security aspect of the system and to make sure that a session lockdown service is available wherein nobody is able to be an uncalled party to the session. Authority to be a part of the session should be by choice of admin only.

On demand/always on

Another differentiator amongst the services is the usage of the managed VC. There are options wherein the VC service may be always on, as in whenever the company wants to use the services they can. The other methodology is when the service starts on demand. The company has to intimate the vendor or the manager to begin the services for VC and only then the service would be initiated. This aspect also incurs a difference in price as well as the always on service is bound to be more expensive than the on demand one.

Pricing

Usage based or number of rooms, etc --the basic idea behind using a managed VC setup would be the pricing. The OpEx model of the managed VC services would suit most SMEs as compared with the CapEx of the privately owned VC setup. But one has to be careful of the pricing structure beforehand. The company would not want to pay for something they would not use. On the flip side, they would have to pay for services that they might require as instantaneous addition of services is always not possible. Pricing for the VC depends on the number of location, number of rooms, and support amongst other things. Most of these pricing structures would be open to some negotiations with the vendors.

Support

Since we are talking about the managed VC services, support is a critical aspect to discuss. There can be cases where the equipment fails to respond or something is wrong somewhere. This is where the need for support arises. Now since the services are managed from the vendor end, it is up to him to take control of the situation and solve the problem. And since this would generally crop up minutes prior to a meeting or even during the meeting, it is highly critical that the problem is communicated clearly and precisely to the person who is going to be the troubleshooter.

It is then critical that the problem be understood and rectified at the earliest so as to maintain the usefulness of the solution. You do not want a setup to not function properly and you using alternate less fancy and cumbersome ways of getting the job done. Thus the support and management aspects need to be clearly worked out with the vendor. The solution being deployed needs to be monitored on a frequent basis. Manageability of the solution should also be chalked out. The company would not want any maintenance activity being performed during office hours when the VC setup might be required. Hence these things need to be decided well in advance with the vendor so as to avoid hassles later.