I'm not here to pick on Skype. They actually offer a great free service introducing thousands, or maybe millions to videoconferencing technology. Heck, I may even sign up too as I just purchased a new laptop with a built in camera and talk to some friends. But there is a big difference between what Tandberg is providing to businesses and what other low cost software based competitors are offering.
A great analogy is the difference between your cell and office phone. We all use our cell phones everyday, but if we are sitting in the office we use the office line. The cell phone is functional, so why do we even need office lines? Now you are getting it... right? You cannot guarantee quality of service on a cell phone and because of that it is not effective for conducting business quality meetings. How many times have we lost a call or missed a few words. Also, cell phones are good for point to point calls, but how about the need to have 4 locations, or people, on the call. The same can be said of videoconferencing.
Applications like Skype can be used, but you cannot count on clarity or quality of the video call. If you want to reach out to a 3rd party, you better have another computer ready, and they will not be talking to the other party. You want to share documents, buy Webex on top of that. Tandberg videoconferencing solutions provides business quality meetings, with QOS and multisite calls, just as office phones do the same for every business out there.
So please go try and use these applications for your business. They will work, and you will probably use them regularly in the beginning, but then you'll be back on a plane traveling to your locations because you could not conduct the meeting you needed on video. Then you'll have a taste for video communications, think of Tandberg, and give us a call at Interchange Technologies.
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