Global Projects, Global Communication

By Sagee Ben-Zedeff

Categories: Video Conferencing

April 20th, 2009

My good friend Einat has recently taken a new role here in RADVISION, managing an EU funded project, which RADVISION takes part in (Sorry, but details will remain disclosed for the time being).

This project does not only include participating companies from all over Europe, but it spans over 3 development centers in RADVISION: in Tel-Aviv (Israel), New Jersey and New Hampshire (US).

RADVISION’s development centers world-wide,
taken from the company calendar chart 2009.

Projects like that are not new, especially in the global landscape of the 21^st century High-Tech community, but managing a project like these usually means that the program manager spends most of his time in airplanes, trying to stay on top of the development effort being conducted in 2 continents and 5 countries.

Surprisingly enough Einat hasn’t been on a single airplane ever since she began managing this project. And it’s not because she’s the proud mother of a 9 month year old girl. As I often like to say, the shoe maker doesn’t go bare footed, and Einat is using RADVISION’s technology, enjoying the great fruits it can bring.

And Einat is not the only one. In fact, all project meetings that involve more than one development center, either inside RADVISION or with other companies, are conducted via video conferencing, using RADVISION’s infrastructure and Scopia Desktop, our desktop video conferencing client.

Global Communication At Work

This basically means that colleagues outside of RADVISION can join a conference taking place on RADVISION’s infrastructure. It means that Einat can enjoy a weekly video conference with partners in Germany, Spain and The Netherlands, as easy as she enjoys her conference with colleagues at NJ or NH centers.

Add this to the already developed corporate infrastructure here in RADVISION – with e-mails, IP phones, video room systems, bulletin boards, intranet and FTP servers, and you have an R&D project which truly has no physical boundaries, a project which is being conducted in a small well-connected village called  “The World”.

We have global enterprises, global working efforts – why not use global communications? Communications that – like global enterprises – cross borders, connect people, allow individuals to utilize resources anywhere, create synergy. Some may even call it Unified Communication.

Two weeks ago Einat went to The Netherlands to meet her counterparts face to face for the first time. By now she knew how they looked, what they are like when they’re talking and has been working with most for quite a while.

It’s true that video conferencing will not completely replace face to face meetings, even with colleagues and partners which are quite distant, but if travelling (for these matters) will become a rare occasion and collaboration across physical distances will become trivial, projects across the globe will be more successful and employees across the globe will be happier.