According to the latest Infonetics Research Newsletter the Enterprise telecom market segment showed strong year-on-year growth over the same period last year (1Q10 to 1Q11). Areas singled out were Unified Communication (UC) PBx, SIP trunking session border controllers, telepresence and video conferencing –the latter two no doubt fuelled (no apology for the pun) or driven (I apologise for that one) by the extortionate raise in gas prices.
The good news is that this growth is consistent with other economic trends, i.e. it is not a bubble, anomaly or any other one off event. The enterprise segment unlike the consumer segment has always been in synch with macro economics. Organizations, under the steely grip of the Chief Finance Officer (CFO), rarely spend money when none is coming in (unlike your wife…or husband!). In poor economic conditions enterprises preserve cash and refrain from major upgrades or purchases – PBxs and video conferencing equipment included. However under an improving economic outlook, as is the case today, purse strings loosen and investments showing a good Return on Investment (ROI) get approved.
The UC PBx has often proven to be such an investment, leading to improvements in company efficiency and effectiveness. Older TDM PBxs, …
The title of this blog can be taken in two ways; firstly as a reflection of the undeniable uptake in video demand (Infonetics Research Newsletter) and secondly, an oblique reference to the fact that the ubiquitous X86 is no longer the best fit for today’s demanding video applications. Quite latterly the x86 is running hot, white hot in fact, due to the ever increasing demands made by real-time video transcoding.
How could this be?
Well let’s first consider that video, thus far, has largely been an on demand service, i.e. stored then streamed as required. This is unlike voice that not only has to be real-time but also low latency. Consequently the underlying supporting infrastructure equipment has to be different. Voice leverages the agile real-time benefits of the DSP, while video hitches a ride on the standard X86 server platforms already used by the internet.
However, this is rapidly changing as the proliferation of mobile video and video conferencing creates the need for real time video also. Given that a single 1080P video channel takes as much processing power as say 1000 channels of voice! At least two issues come to mind; processing speed and network bandwidth.…
