Web Conferencing Resources

Reduce Travel with Web Conferencing

July 19, 2009 – 7:50 pm

In a trend that could transform the way companies do business, Cisco Systems has slashed its annual travel budget by two-thirds – from $750 million to $240 million – by using similar web conferencing technology to replace air travel and hotel bills for its vast workforce. Likewise, Hewlett-Packard says it sliced 30 percent of its travel expenses from 2007 to 2008 – and expects even better results for 2009 – in large part because of its video conference technology.

Both Cisco and HP have dual motives for grounding employees. They want not only to cut expenses in tough economic times but also to promote their own brands of pricey conferencing systems. But the success of the two global tech giants in keeping workers away from airports en masse is sure to catch the eyes of CEOs around the world.

Cisco says more than 300 corporate customers already have deployed its TelePresence conferencing system. HP, whose conferencing clients include AMD in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Nokia, would not disclose how many clients it has for its system, called Halo. Cisco and HP, in addition to competing with each other, also battle smaller video conferencing companies – such as Tandberg, Teliris and Polycom – for market share in the rapidly growing niche.

Until recently, video conferencing was not something executives could depend on. Corporate networks, for example, lacked the bandwidth to handle video. Connecting farflung participants required endless fiddling from the company’s IT department. Audio and video were often out of sync – so the movement of participants’ lips didn’t match their words. Then there were the constant freeze-frames and dropped connections – which often resulted in frustrated participants boarding planes for face-to-face meetings.