10 Trends Shaping the Future of Conferencing Services

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Frost Sullivan recently released a report
detailing the rapid growth rate of
video conferencing services in Latin America.
Based on their report the conferencing services
market is estimated to grow by 23 in the next
seven years (2014-2021), this will ultimately
account for 138.6 million in annual revenues.
The exponential growth will be spurred by high
growth rates in visual communications and
collaboration, growth of virtual teams, cost
reduction and productivity enhancements.
In this regard, ezTalks, your preferred online
meetings, training and webinars
solutions provider, has compiled a comprehensive
list on the leading trends in the industry.
Not only are these the most popular trends but
also the trends with most impact. The list is
based on research conducted on more than 20 of
the leading conferencing-services providers. 1.
User Experience is Key Long gone are the days
when only tech-savvy individuals could operate
the latest technology. Simpler and more
aesthetically pleasing interfaces are now a key
factor for virtual teams before they agree to
acquire a web conferencing service. A
more-intuitive user experience is now more
important than ever and will continue to be a
major consideration. Video and audio
conferencing tools should be well designed to
meet the needs of the end user enabling even
novices to adapt easily to the technology.
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• Mobile-First Strategies are Coming of Age
• The emergence of powerful, affordable and
  reliable smart phones has shifted the attention
  of the entire world towards mobile. Web
  conferencing services have not been left behind.
  Some conferencing service providers have reported
  that mobile conferencing apps account for 60 of
  their customer base this gives a clear indication
  that the Smartphone revolution should not be
  taken lightly and will continue to drive the
  growth of video and audio conferencing services.
• Company-Wide Conferencing
• Firms are now actively deploying video and audio
  conferencing services for their entire
  workforce. The growth of this trend is attributed
  to active-host and full-deployment models and
  affordability of the service. This trend will
  only continue to grow as more and more companies
  realize the benefits of conferencing services.
• VolP is Replacing PSTN
• The traditional PSTN networks have served us well
  but VolP is increasingly becoming the go-to
  solution for conferencing calls. This is a
  natural transition and the growth of VolP
  traffic is expected to lower the average selling
  prices in the years to come.
• Web Conferencing is becoming a Collaborative
  Platform
• Enabling collaboration online is one of the
  strengths of web conferencing. Firms are finally
  coming to appreciate the ability to create an
  affordable work space online that previously
  required members to travel in order to
  collaborate. An example is the Cisco Spark which
  has made it possible for team members to share
  content, leave notes and host meetings online.
• Firms are using Multiple Conferencing Solutions
• The growth of conferencing services has led to
  the innovation of various audio, video, file
  sharing and collaborative solutions,
  unfortunately or fortunately these services are
  offered by different providers. This has led to
  firms using multiple conferencing providers

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• at a time The growing trend has led to confusion
  and some disorganization but has
• enabled the smaller players in the industry to
  compete.
• Visual Conferencing Continues to Grow
• High-quality visual conferencing and the networks
  to support it on an array of devices have
  enabled the rapid growth of video. In addition,
  the increased number of millennials in the
  workplace and affordability of video conferencing
  solutions have helped the business world
  overcome the fear of being on camera.
• Content Management is the Future
• Managing audio and video recordings, file sharing
  and the collaborative work space is the next big
  step that conferencing services have to take in
  order to further mature their products. This
  will be made easier with the parallel a similarly
  accelerated growth of cloud computing.
  Conferencing services should be able to make
  information searchable, digestible and readily
  available.
• Conferencing Minutes are Now Sold in Bundles
• On-premise and hosted Unified Communications
  Collaboration (UCC) bundles are now
  incorporating audio and visual capabilities.
  Enterprise communication vendors such as
  Microsoft have streamlined their packages and are
  starting to offer products within UCC
  entry-level bundles. This will ultimately keep
  reducing the cost of conferencing services
  enabling smaller firms to get involved.
• Hosted Video is Becoming Mainstream
• Traditional video conferencing is steadily
  transitioning to the desktop and Smartphone.
  This factor in addition to more firms adopting an
  open space work place has led to ad- hoc
  meetings. Hosted video will is expected to keep
  growing as more and more organizations realize
  that cloud computing and conferencing solutions
  can bridge the gap between them and large
  corporations.