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How are vendors innovating video conferencing features?

Now that video has matured, vendors are looking for new ways to innovate video conferencing features. Learn what new capabilities are likely to come to video conferencing.

David Maldow
By
Published: 14 Oct 2019

For most of business video's history, development has been unsurprising. Every few years, cameras would increase resolution and clarity, while software would do a better job at processing video and efficiently sending it across the internet.

Year after year, calls got better, and services became more reliable and flexible. Simply bridging together calls between different services -- or using different protocols-- was considered revolutionary. What was called video innovation was actually just making video function well.

Today, video not only works, but has gained users' trust. It's no longer novel that video calls on leading services provide reliable quality. Development along the lines of higher quality or more reliability won't have the same market impact that it had in the past.

Users don't want just any new capability; they want innovation with a purpose. Now that video conferencing is a reliable technology, providers need to look at how it's used in the workplace and the purpose it serves. Vendors need to look at improving video conferencing features and functionality to enable fully productive remote meetings.

Two things happen in meetings: communication and work. We share information with each other, and we make progress on projects. Providing high-quality audio and video solves the communication part of remote meetings. But what about the other part? How can video conferencing features help people get work done?

Where video innovation is headed

The video industry is adding integrations and intelligence to video meeting platforms as a way to increase the productivity of video meetings. By sharing information with other business tools, such as calendars, CRM, team chats and project management, you reduce meeting management and increase the value of the actual working session.

One of the more exciting video conferencing feature innovations is developments in intelligence. Live text transcription is quickly becoming a common video conferencing feature, reducing or even eliminating the need to take notes during meetings. New features include taking quick, shareable video clips during meetings. Shareable clips take note taking to the next level by providing the ability to share the actual moment of interest from a meeting.

These intelligent meeting features could also come together in the form of a digital meeting assistant. Imagine a business-minded Amazon Alexa sitting in on all of your meetings and understanding the conversation well enough to create reminders, add items to your calendar, share files with the appropriate people and perform other business assistant tasks.

Regardless of whether we get this type of digital business assistant in our meetings or if the intelligence functions will work more in the background, we can expect the focus of video innovation to increase the productivity and value of meetings.

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