OVCC Announces Video Calls on Demand

The Open Visual Communications Consortium's (OVCC) latest network service definition allows business video users to make secure video calls without the need to schedule them in advance, providing access to high quality and secure calls with greater convenience and ease.

OVCC service users can join by dialing in to a video call just as they would an audio conference. Given that OVCC's membership includes service providers around the world, this means that soon, business video calls will be easier to create and join as soon as they are needed, regardless of who and where the calls are coming from. This saves valuable time, accelerating communication and efficiency; after all, those who can react and respond the fastest have a valuable advantage in business environments.

"Video conferencing has slowly evolved over the past 25 years," says Jim Burton of UCStrategies. "The pace is now accelerating with the work the OVCC has contributed to the industry over the past few years."

The OVCC is a group consisting of video exchange providers, network providers, and equipment manufacturers that work together to expand video communications and make video calls a simpler, more convenient process. The goal of the OVCC is to create multi-vendor, multi-network specifications, providing a business model and technical blueprint that allows support of the full range of video systems across businesses and devices.

Airtel, AT&T, BCS Global, BT, Orange and Telefonica provide OVCC compliant video services to enterprise users. Telefonica is the latest member to achieve compliance.

OVCC's goal is to allow for business-class video communications between companies that is secure, easy to use, and provides a high-quality experience. Although there are many existing video services, such as Skype, Facetime, and Google Hangouts, their reliance on basic Internet services can create unreliable quality, including dropped calls, lag, and imperfect video and sound, which are unacceptable in business environments. The OVCC's aim is to assure reliable and secure services with the best quality possible, and while some consumer-oriented video services may be convenient for casual communications, they cannot promise the same.

Also included in the expanded OVCC service definition announced this month are capacity management capabilities and support scenarios for content sharing and encryption. These features will help IT department accommodate increased and unscheduled video calls. Naturally, the ability to instantly launch video calls may tax the IT departments, but the service definition provides support so they can and will adapt in order to provide more efficiency and convenience to their video users.

"It is no secret that the use of video communications within organizations has been expanding at a brisk rate, but its use between organizations still faces major stumbling blocks," says UC Expert Michael Finneran. "Beyond the obvious issues like codec incompatibilities, video lacks such basic things as a directory or a simple way of informing business partners how they can establish a video connection. The OVCC has been working to address these issues, and ultimately to make business class inter-company video calls as simple as a phone call."

This is the first step in OVCC services expansion announced earlier this month. The group also announced its next step is to address a common dial plan for point-to-point video dialing, followed by video-enabled UC services, so stay tuned.