By Tony Waltham
Tuesday, November 20 2007 12:10 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,62034576,00.htm

Online collaboration is "pivotal to the future", according to Cisco Systems senior vice president Howard Charney, who predicts that as the Internet moves toward being the proxy for real-life communication, so high-definition video communications will become the "next big thing".

In a recent telephone interview, Charney looked back at how IP communications had gradually evolved, gaining incremental enhancements from text, adding pictures, audio and low resolution video.

Noting how we had seen this change incrementally over the years as things became faster, we were now moving in the direction of "the highest fidelity communications that you can imagine"--being high definition video "and, for the want of a better term, Dolby 5.0 audio".

"When you combine Dolby 5.0 audio and high definition video, when I see you on the screen or multiple screens, then all of a sudden this conversation has a different reality to it... We are moving in the direction of a much heavier reliance on video--not because Cisco wants to sell more video equipment, but it's because people interact with each other much more effectively that way," he said.

Cisco Systems, as a leader in both unified communications tools that enhance collaboration as well as high-definition video with its telepresence solutions, has set a target to cut its travel budget by 20 percent in fiscal year 2008, now under way, to demonstrate savings in business travel.

He said Cisco believed that "if we are not a living example of the use of the technology, then it's sort of a hollow marketing campaign that has no teeth...we really believe that unified communications is a mechanism by which people will improve the quality of their lives."

Charney sees reductions in global travel ahead as video conferencing systems become more available over the next three years, while he noted that this would also benefit humanity by reducing our carbon footprint.

One major issue ahead would be to scale up the networks to enable them to cope with the massive increase that high-definition video traffic would bring, particularly since most networks were owned by the private sector, he said.

Charney pointed out that Cisco needed to make it clear to its service provider partners that they could make money by providing new video-based services. Investments in new fiber or other new forms of broadband access had to be in a partnership between the public sector and the private sector because these investments were extremely capital-intensive, he said.

Cisco also needed to work with governments and to tell them "the future of your country or the future of your region is dependent upon what we believe is the biggest momentum effect in the 21st century--which is broadband access and connectivity," he said.

He added that Cisco would also convey the fact that "when you have connectivity, when you have broadband access, then you can have GDP growth. Now, you need this, so what can we do to have this occur? What programs should we put in place?"

Profitability would be the driver for the necessary private sector investment, and whether the investment would be forthcoming could be a valid concern, although Charney said he felt that it was manageable because you could make money with new services.

Asked how he saw the role of WiMAX, Charney noted Cisco's recent acquisition of Navini Networks, adding that Cisco believed that the most appropriate deployment of WiMAX was in rural areas.

Today, many of us find that the connectivity they can afford here is barely enough to keep a low-resolution clip on YouTube from stuttering, and the idea of enjoying high-definition video and Dolby 5.0 audio seems a little remote. But if or when we get the bandwidth and low-latency required, what comes after video?

Charney posed the hypothetical question, and then answered it: "Holograms... if you think a lot of bandwidth was necessary or required for video, well, you're going to need a lot of bandwidth for holograms. Trust me."