28 August 2008

Virtual meetings becoming the Ã¢â¬ÅâœrealÃ¢â¬~ thing?

With steadily rising costs, the meeting and business market is taking a second look at face-to-face meetings and sometimes choosing instead to go virtual, according to travel observers.

Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year, according to wire service reports.

Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May alone, for an annual saving of millions of dollars and countless hours of wearying travel for its workers.

As travel costs rise and airlines cut service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting Ã¢â¬' and business travel as well, reports The New York Times. At the same time, the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive to move digital bits instead of bodies.

The emerging trend, analysts say, goes well beyond a reaction to rising travel costs and a weakening economy. Ã¢â¬ÅâœThese technology tools are going to change the way corporations think about travel and work in the long run,Ã¢â¬~ said Claire Schooley, an analyst at Forrester Resaerch.

Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise.

No single breakthrough explains the progress, but rather a series of step-by-step advances Ã¢â¬' and steady investment Ã¢â¬' in telecommunications networks, software and computer processing.

The results can be seen not only in the expensive new telepresence systems like those from Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard, but also in more mainstream collaboration technologies Ã¢â¬' Web conferencing, online document sharing, wikis and internet telephony.

Report by David Wilkening