One of the ancillary technology that continues to grab headlines and investment from major industry players is video conferencing.

The technology that allows users to “see and interact” with one another has gained favor with small and large enterprises alike during the last few years as a:

• More impactful alternative to typical voice conferencing
• Way to conduct distance learning sessions and trainings
• Vehicle to lower travel costs

But is video conferencing equipment living up to the promises pumped out by vendor’s marketing budgets? Better yet, has video conferencing, which has been around since the 1970’s ever been more than hype?

According to A. Michael Noll, in his piece “Is a video teleconferencing bubble emerging?“, the answer is no and yes.

Citing research conducted during the 70’s and 80’s Noll found that:

• Teleconferencing was best suited to regularly occurring meetings intended mostly for information exchange and similar low-risk purposes
• Public room teleconferencing was not successful and that the facilities had to be on one’s own premises
• For users, high-quality audio was far more important than video (can you say HD Voice?)

In total the sum of research and Noll’s ascertains point to the fact that video conferencing has and continues to be a highly touted technology that has not lived up to its promise.

Now, I’m no video conferencing expert.

My video conferencing usage has been relegated to Skype, Vidtel’s video phone calling service and some extended demo’s using Polycom’s video conferencing suite. All of which have proven to be positive experiences.

Yet none of these experiences have driven a full blown need for video conferencing. Which would lead me to believe that the research cited above is accurate.

So for those of you more familiar with video conferencing, “Is video conferencing over-hyped?” Or is video conferencing continuing to grow in favor with small and large enterprises alike?