PGi’s legacy in virtual meetings began a long time ago, in audio conferencing - and audio remains a hugely important enabler and differentiator for online communications solutions, whether in large-scale webcasts or for close teamwork.
Audio was the precursor of today’s UC tools and paved the way for the collaboration environments we now enjoy. But even with the enhancement of moving pictures, however, there remains a trade-off between the number of participants on the call and the degree of real interactivity that can take place between them. At the extremes might be a conversation between two individuals, vs a TV broadcast to millions of people - but between them along the spectrum lie a range of different possibilities.
The limits of collaboration
“Your software might enable 125 participants in a meeting”, explained Terry Lyons SVP, Collaboration at PGi, “but in my opinion, once you go beyond 50, it’s really not as collaborative as it could be any more”
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Terry Lyons[/caption]
To really connect and get things done together with everyone able to contribute effectively, much lower numbers are needed, but the explosion of uptake of video conferencing platforms during 2020 has made their use a lot more spontaneous and flexible, even at scale, and this functionality is now regarded as table stakes for any collaboration solution.
“10 years ago the carriers and service providers were under threat from over the top providers, and now they’re under pressure to provide strong business communications solutions - audio, collaboration and event solutions, that they can bundle together and package into business communication suites,” Lyons explained, in a recent webcast.
Scaling up to interactive events
But the big shift in expectation now is at the scale end, where increasingly enterprises are seeking to communicate to much bigger audiences, either internally or externally/publicly, via webcasts or virtual events.
Here, professionalism is paramount. “These meetings are much less fault-tolerant than audio or collaboration meetings,” explained Lyons, where anything from investor relations or the CEO’s personal reputation could be at stake.
