Video Communications Management Systems 2004: Video Network Management, Call Processing, & Scheduling Software

SUMMARY

This updated report explores a new area of software designed to improve the lives of videoconferencing network administrators and users alike. Three major categories of software - management and monitoring, call processing, and scheduling - are described in detail. Vendors profiled in depth include Aethra, AMX Corporation, Forgent Networks, Magicsoft, Polycom, RADVISION, Renovo Software LLC, TANDBERG, VCON, and VisionNex. The 200+ page report is available in two versions; the expanded version includes an electronic version and adds detailed market sizing and forecast.

Chapter 1. Executive Summary

Video communications management software is one of the most dynamic segments of the visual communications and rich media conferencing industries. Vendors are addressing the video device management, video network management, call processing, and scheduling needs of users with increasingly sophisticated software solutions. Some of these new products are coming from third party vendors who are concentrating on this area exclusively; others have been put forth by the hardware vendors. In either case, vendors are addressing fundamental needs of service providers and enterprise users alike: i) as more equipment is being deployed, customers need efficient ways to manage, monitor, and control these devices from a central location (or several locations for large, geographically dispersednetworks); ii) as videoconferencing becomes more widespread, the need for higher reliability increases and becomes more visible; iii) enterprise resources, including bandwidth, need to be used effectively, reliably, and in a more cost-efficient manner; and iv) users need rich media communications functions that emulate the familiar voice PBX functions and help make these new communications solutions work the way users want to work ad hoc, reliably, and feature rich with call processing capabilities.

Market Overview

Wainhouse Research believes that, emulating the personal computing industry, the videoconferencing industry is undergoing a natural evolution. It is moving away from its past based on unmanaged, isolated devices and toward a new world consisting of connected, monitored, scheduled, and highly managed "complete" networks of devices (whereby devices are readily understood, and part of a comprehensive, dynamic entity). Enabling this evolution is a new class of management tools, software that can manage various combinations of group systems, desktop systems, multipoint control units (MCU's), gateways, gatekeepers, external A/V devices, bandwidth, and even dialing scenarios. A few of the vendors offering these tools are videoconferencing system and bridge manufacturers; others aresoftware and/or services firms (or combinations of these types of vendors). This report addresses similarities and differences in approach, functional capabilities, strengths and weaknesses, pricing and packaging, and explains the relative positioning of these new tools and the vendors behind them.

We segment the software products covered in this report into three major functional areas: monitoring and management, call processing, and scheduling. Some category bleeding is occurring (and undoubtedly will continue to occur) between these three categories; some products that call themselves management products provide some scheduling or call processing capabilities; some do not. One vendor's bandwidth management can be very different from another vendor's. One vendor's system statistics may refer to jitter and latency, another to call detail records and logs of completed calls. This report, through detailed market overview, technology overview, vendor profiles, and product matrices, carefully notes specific functionality accorded to the 10 vendors and their 17 software productscovered. It tries to clearly portray each vendor's strengths and weaknesses, even with the category blurring and overlapping functionality that exist at this time.

Our definition of monitoring includes understanding the health of a device, whether it is available, what capabilities it offers, in what kind of call is it connected or even with whom it is connected. It can include receiving alerts in a variety of formats, thumbnail video feeds, and a host of other data points concerning that device's and the overall network's health. Ultimately, monitoring is about having access to how the device is performing within the call, even to the point of having some ability to manage the device.

Managing covers several major areas: real-time remote system control (making something happen on a device), and performing of administrative tasks that support the device and the network. These functions can range from establishing an ad hoc call, rebooting a locked up system, manipulating continuous presence or voice-activated switching settings in MCU's, creating templates for storing a variety of configuration settings, and performing remote software or firmware upgrades. Managing also can include providing automated global directory services, LDAP and MS Exchange support, and a large set of software-level activities that enable effective application of the technology. Can I have a dialing universe where I don't have to worry about knowing or remembering long dialing strings orIP addresses?

Call processing is a relatively recent category development in the videoconferencing industry. As we move into the IP and mixed H.320-H.323 video worlds (and see continued deployments of even H.321, the ATM standard, as well as MPEG video), a challenge (and opportunity) presents itself. How can vendors do a better job of improving the likelihood of call connections and at the same time leverage bandwidth availability and overall network resources? The answer: by creating software that determines the best path for a call to be routed, that finds alternate or lower cost routes, depending on network topology and requirements, and that can actually mimic a voice PBX in functionality (call forward, transfer, hold, etc).

Call processing software is meant to make the lives of end users better (in addition to improving organizations' ability to manage resources and save money). Can I find someone if he is not at his desk? Can I be sure that my multipoint call occurs, without worrying about where MP and MCU resources are located? If I don't have an embedded MP, can I get the embedded MP capability of launching an ad hoc multipoint call from my single-point endpoint? Call processing includes some overlap with some of the management dialing services, building on those with a whole new set of capabilities.

As with other software, call processing "blurs" into the other categories. Some software that is sharply defined as monitoring and management, or scheduling, includes some bandwidth management or intelligent resource allocation. Thus though VCON's MXM and Polycom's PathNavigator are placed squarely within this software space, several of the other vendors covered in this report are doing some type of light, or heavy, call processing.

Scheduling has evolved from being a small market niche that has been around for awhile to an increasingly important functional element of a videoconferencing network. Scheduling is a key means of driving deployments in large enterprises, and is increasingly important not just to reserving a system or resource, but also to ensuring that a conference is launched properly and has the desired policy or general features needed. The ability to schedule resources is part and parcel of effective video network management, and is included within this report because many scheduling systems contain various levels of endpoint and bridge/gatekeeper/gateway management functionality. Some vendors focus on resource scheduling only, whereas others use scheduling as the platform for line testing,equipment validation, resource allocation, and automated call launching.

The Drivers

The relatively new network management products discussed in this report are important for a number of reasons. Their ultimate benefit should be to make videoconferencing and its enabling technologies more ubiquitous and more useful. The need is to keep end users happy and systems reliable and available, and to improve ROI and the ability for organizations to expand their networks while maximizing productivity. The bottom line is that conferences should start on time. The video device management, call processing, and scheduling solutions described in this report address this goal by providing system administrators and conferencing users the ability to:

• Recognize the health or status of all devices on the network and sometimes anticipate problems before they occur
• Understand the health of the network itself in each segment
• Make calls across different protocols, networks, and media types easily, without worrying about the technical details
• Manage bandwidth and resources cost-effectively while ensuring Quality of Service (QoS)
• Integrate videoconferencing and meetings into business processes, using tools like scheduling software and notification tools like email.

The software products discussed in this report address all of these demand drivers in some way, shape or form.

Market Forecast

By reviewing the variety of pricing scenarios, taking the total number of licensed devices and software licenses, and looking at total customer counts, we conservatively estimate that approximately 150,000 endpoints are being managed in several thousand organizations using the software tools discussed in this report. And we estimate that the tools manage as many as 1,200 MCU's.

Our reported revenues are for software sales ONLY, and do not include professional services provided by covered vendors or other service providers, integrators, and the like. Most of the software vendors covered here also garner additional revenues from services & equipment resale activity, and the equipment makers naturally see additional revenues from equipment sales and other products.

The growth witnessed from 2002 to 2003 was flat, with revenues of $24.4M in 2003. This was the result of a slowdown in software spending, some industry consolidation, and perhaps a pause on the part of buyers to focus on IP and ISDN convergence. With the investments that large networks make into equipment and infrastructure for video, there is a clear opportunity to show return on investment for the software vendors as many already are doing for their customers.

For the forecast period from 2004 to 2008 (full forecast available in the Industry Analysis & Market Forecast version of this report only), Wainhouse Research expects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 15.5% in revenues for the total management software market. The specific growth rates of the segments (management & monitoring, call processing, and scheduling) will vary somewhat, with scheduling and call processing experiencing slightly higher growth than management and monitoring software.

Vendors Covered in this Report

Vendors covered and profiled in depth in this report include Aethra, AMX Corporation, Forgent Networks, Magicsoft, Polycom, RADVISION, Renovo Software LLC, TANDBERG, VCON, and VisionNex.

SONY, First Virtual (FVC), and VTEL are included in the market sizing and forecast and may have provided some sales data, but they declined in-depth profiles. Typically this was the result of products in transition or a lack of focus in this area.

No single management product does everything, at least not yet. And there are two major camps of vendors, each with interesting attributes. The independents, or third party participants, are likely to provide custom support for large networks that are comprised of miscellaneous hardware devices from multiple vendors, giving administrators and technicians one master interface to manage their video communication resources. And since management software is likely to be the mainstream of their business, these vendors are likely to be the best that they can be in this market area. The hardware vendors, on the other hand, are likely to concentrate on software solutions that maximize the utility of their endpoints, bridges, gateways, etc. and that also give their products some type ofcompetitive edge. These vendors vastly improved their ability to manage one another's devices over the past 18 months and show signs of "edging out" some of the independent software vendors. At this stage in the market development, it appears that the independents will continue to find a role for themselves, but that they will be challenged to compete effectively with the equipment vendors.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. Executive Summary
• Chapter 2. Market Overview
• Chapter 3. Technology Overview
• Chapter 4. Vendor Profiles
• Chapter 5. Industry Forecast
• Appendix 1. Product Matrices
• Appendix 2. Management Glossary

Detailed Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Executive Summary

• Market Overview
• The Drivers
• Market Forecast
• Vendors Covered in this Report

Chapter 2. Market Overview

• Introduction
• Historical Perspective
• Market Needs in Search of Solutions
• What is Video Network Management?
• What is Device Monitoring and Management?
• What is Call Processing?
• What is Scheduling?
• Category Features & Functions
• Structure of & Players in the Video Management Software Market
• Vendor Capabilities
• Vendor Vision and Ability to Execute

Chapter 3. Technology Overview

• Standards
• H.350
• SIP
• H.245
• H.450 Supplementary Services
• Frameworks & Guidelines
• Methods of Managing Devices
• SNMP
• FTP
• HTTP
• XML
• Telnet
• API's
• SDK's
• Device Drivers
• Diagnostic Tools
• Call Processing
• SIP
• Directory Services
• Call Routing & Bandwidth Management
• Monitoring Quality of Service
• Scheduling Considerations
• Scheduling Integration
• System/Software Architectures
• Client/Server
• Java
• Web Browsers

Chapter 4. Vendor Profiles

• Report Methodology
• Matching Vendors to User Requirements
• AethraR
• AMX Corporation
• Forgent Networks
• ALLIANCE Multimedia
• ALLIANCE Scheduler and Meeting Room Manager Comparison
• Magicsoft
• Polycom
• PCS
• GMS
• PathNavigator
• WebCommander
• RADVISION
• iVIEW NMS
• iVIEW ECS
• iVIEW VCS
• Renovo Software, LLC
• TANDBERG
• TMS
• Scheduler
• VCON
• VisionNex Technologies

Chapter 5. Industry Forecast

• Market Space
• Forecast
• Forecast Assumptions
• Monitoring & Management Software Forecast
• Scheduling and Call Processing Software Forecast
• Total Market Forecast

Appendix 1. Product Matrices

• Aethra AeUMS
• AMX MeetingManager
• Forgent Networks ALLIANCE
• Magicsoft VC Wizard
• Polycom PCS/GMS/PathNavigator/WebCommander
• RADVISION
• Renovo Software, LLC
• TANDBERG TMS
• VCON MXM
• VisionNex VCS

Appendix 2. Management Glossary

List of Figures

• Figure 1 Major Areas of Video Network Management
• Figure 2 A Weighted View of the Video Network Management Universe
• Figure 3 Vendor Vision ~ Ability to Execute Quadrant
• Figure 4 AMX MeetingManager/NetLinx Environment
• Figure 5 AMX MeetingManager Appointment Details Screen
• Figure 6 Forgent ALLIANCE Media Manager Dashboard
• Figure 7 Forgent ALLIANCE Scheduler Outlook Appointment Screen
• Figure 8 Magicsoft VC Wizard Conference Search Screen
• Figure 9 Polycom Management Software Product Line
• Figure 10 PCS Network Aware Scheduler Recurring Meeting Screen
• Figure 11 GMS System Management Screen (with Remote Video Enabled)
• Figure 12 PathNavigator Group Policy Configuration Screen
• Figure 13 RADVISION NMS Network Tree Screen
• Figure 14 Interactive Video Manager Network Administrator Screen
• Figure 15 TANDBERG Instant Messenger Buddies Screen
• Figure 16 TANDBERG End User Scheduler Screen
• Figure 17 MXM Conference Moderator Scheduler Interface
• Figure 18 MXM Conversation Status Monitor Screen
• Figure 19 VisionNex VCS Service Template Screen
• Figure 20 VisionNex Customer Profile Screen
• Figure 21 Management and Monitoring Software Revenue Forecast 2004-2008
• Figure 22 Scheduling and Call Processing Software Revenue Forecast 2004-2008
• Figure 23 Video Network Management Total Revenue Forecast 2004-2008

List of Tables

• Table 1 Video Network Management Software Forecast 2004-2008
• Table 2 Category Features and Functions
• Table 3 High-Level View of Product Capabilities Focus
• Table 4 Forgent ALLIANCE Multimedia & Meeting Room Manager Comparison
• Table 5 PathNavigator OneDial Support (Polycom and Non-Polycom Devices)
• Table 6 Video Network Management Total Revenue Forecast 2004-2008