'The multipoint conferencing market in India is 30—40 units a year'

Radvision, a company headquartered in Israel, develops IP communication
products and technologies for converged voice, video, and data over IP and
3G. 

Rajanga Sadhanand, Country Manager, Radvision talks to Alok Singh on the
market potential of the videoconferencing solutions in India.

What is the current size of the videoconferencing market in India?

In our estimation, the market for multipoint conferencing units (MCU) in
India is about 30-40 units a year. We have about 35 percent of that market and
we expect our business to grow by 25 percent next year.

How is the market for MCUs expected to grow over the next year?

The market is expected to grow by about 30 percent next year. Some of the
factors that will fuel this growth are the coming down of bandwidth prices and a
growing awareness about the advantages of converged video communications.

Why has the market uptake of webconferencing been so slow?

As a matter of fact it has not been slow; there is a gradual transition
towards IP communications. Firstly, bandwidth prices have dropped and secondly,
people are looking for more flexible deployment options that offer convergence-the
possibility of moving from separate conferencing and collaboration 'silos',
to integrated conferencing environments. People are not only looking towards IP
but also towards 3G mobile, video communications.

Will the customer still be willing to pay for the conferencing solutions,
when free communications solutions could be easily available on the Internet?

Yes definitely, today we have to make sure that people can communicate
across multiple networks, ISDN, IP and 3G. Without the core infrastructure to do
this, enterprises and service providers will not be able to provide a completely
converged solution and users will be limited with regards to who they can talk
with and with which device. We are positive that users will be willing to pay
for high-quality conferencing services that fulfill their daily communications
requirements and enable them to talk with anyone, anytime, and with any device.