Audio/Video is one of those industries where disruption has been most destructive and companies have found their technology redundant overnight. Not so long back, it was CXOs pride to showcase her/his conferencing system and connecting across the world from a swanky room to a group of equally elite participants on the other side. And now, it is as pervasive as laptop and desktops. And yet, when asked how to select which one is most suitable to our business case, we all struggle.
Based on some secondary research, discussion with clients and technology experts we could construe that, one has to begin with understanding the segmentation of the solutions. Segmentation is done based on their use-case, broadly into three main categories a) Conferencing and Collaboration needs b) Services and remote infra management and c) Customized solution for business continuity.
Customized solution for business continuity
If it’s specific use case like medical consultation and management system for hospitals which maintains the entire spectrum starting with appointments setup to consultation, prescription generation and keeping records of the history of consultation, this will fall in customized business cases. Few similar other cases are, vehicle repair and maintenance management system or school/college tutoring and management system etc. For such requirements, one needs to integrate workflows, some hardware and collaboration system together to solve the business case. Such cases are not readily available off the shelf and hence needs an system integrator. There are some few brands specifically for medical industry, one which we have experienced is Neoteric.
The challenge with bespoke business cases are that the solution provider should be aware about the entire set of technology, from end points, networking and integration with AD for an on-premise solution to application integration to the ecosystem. One more important points in these are HIPAA security compliance for data security. Only few vendors have these security certificates.
Remote infrastructure support and maintenance
Second business case is for remote support, and assistance when a centralized team of specialists and experts are providing remote support to hardwares, Softwares and Infra. Usually called RIMS- remote infrastructure management system. With these tools engineers can support provide remote support successfully to hardware like storages, servers, workstation and all other end point devices with ease, and keep track of all the problems addressed over the life of device. These are specially successfully in software support like ERP, Virtualization, VDI, Oracle applications and other Softwares cases like SCADA systems, Water management Softwares etc. Few good products also have integrated ticketing and reporting workflows integrated in it. For such kind of remote infrastructure monitoring and management system, there are many applications but only few have that kind of data security and compliance certifications in place. One can make-shift arrangements with any video conferencing apps, but, to my knowledge only two cater to the wide spectrum of support, monitoring and maintenance service. They would be GoToAssist and it’s set of products from LogMeIn and Cisco WebEx. I haven’t found other tools to be as useful for these cases.
Platform for video conferencing and document collaboration
The most easiest and prevalent usage is video conferencing and collaboration, webinar and training tool/ platforms where hundreds of platforms are available. And you can pick and choose any based on your usage and budget. Some of the most used ones are Zoom, Teams, WebEx, GoToMeeting. However, only LogMeIn has specific products for each use case. Perhaps they are the only vendors who have separate product for webinar, separate for training and a different one for webinar with workflows integrated into them.
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