[comm]desktop videoconferencing

[Ruth Milner]

FYI, an excerpt from the InformationWeek online daily digest.

Ruth.
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** Video-To-Desktop Ready For Its Close-Up

Having been rocked by the Sept. 11 attacks, financial-services 
companies are finding that videoconferencing technologies are 
crucial to their new reality. Not only do videoconferencing 
applications offer an alternative to travel, but as financial 
firms in lower Manhattan consider spreading their staffs among 
multiple locations to avoid the kind of tragedy that devastated 
bond trader Cantor Fitzgerald, they're planning to make video 
links a more important part of their business culture. 

At the same time, some financial firms have discovered that 
videoconferencing doesn't have to involve getting access to 
conference rooms and coordinating disparate schedules. Instead, 
they're using networked, video-to-the-desktop technology from 
companies such as Avistar Communications, Polycom, and First 
Virtual Communications. Avistar reports that demand for, and use 
of, its software--a PC-based application that operates like video 
instant messaging and runs over ISDN lines or IP networks--has 
risen since the attacks. VP John Carlson says one 
financial-service customer's usage shot up 160% in September, and 
the company is receiving a growing number of inquiries from 
prospects.

Jim Mahoney, VP of operations at SG Cowen Securities Corp., says 
that since the sell-side brokerage firm deployed Avistar in May, 
the software has effectively supplanted traditional 
videoconferencing as the video tool of choice among the 84 
employees who have Avistar installed on their desktops. Mahoney 
says the system, which costs between $2,000 and $4,000 per seat, 
lets execs, researchers, and traders visit each other's offices 
virtually, regardless of location, and that he's seen a spike in 
usage since the attacks. "The next step is to link it directly to 
our clients," he says.

As the technological wrinkles of developing widespread video over 
IP are ironed out, Avistar and its competitors could see a much 
richer market for their products, Yankee Group analyst Joe Gagan 
says. He expects the growth of video over IP to be accompanied by 
stiffer competition, but he says companies such as Avistar will 
be at an advantage because of their experience with real-world 
deployments. - Tony Kontzer