For many years, we’ve questioned the prevailing method for deploying video conferencing gear. Essentially, most enterprise systems are put outside the firewall, exposed on the public Internet, and given a static IP address for making and receiving calls. Advantages are numerous to this approach: It avoids many of the issues for traversing corporate (and home) firewalls and for overcoming NAT (network address translation from private to public addresses in real-time), and it offers a simple IP address for dialing and being dialed.

But this is also highly risky. It basically takes an important communication tool and window into company conference rooms and opens the rooms up to those outside who could relatively easily hack in, take over systems, and even as the article reported, potentially eavesdrop on highly sensitive conversations.

Placing enterprise systems outside the firewall has always confounded me. In the voice over IP (VoIP) world, it’s common practice to place phone systems behind the firewall. Sophisticated mechanisms have emerged to both protect and open up voice communications with the outside world (after all, what good is a voice system that can’t connect with others outside your company boundaries?).

Video has often been treated differently. IT managers would routinely say that it’s not a problem because… well… it hasn’t been a problem. Coming from the same IT managers who take security very seriously in other realms, it’s curious.

Opposite but also problematic is other major approach taken in the video conferencing industry: Putting video systems behind the firewall and letting NO ONE else reach them. This works okay if you are only interested in speaking with people within your own company and for larger companies, a case can be made that internal communication is the first problem to solve. Compounding the problem is that calling others in the video space often requires pretzel-contorting custom opening of firewall ports, special configuration, and interoperability issues.

Fortunately, there is another way. At Vidtel, we believe we’ve solved this problem through our Vidtel Connect service. Business customer can put their video systems securely behind their own corporate firewall and overcome NAT while also being publically reachable with a simple email-like calling address. Vidtel’s solution is based on a large service provider and enterprise customer approach for VoIP but is uniquely adapted for video conferencing. Adaptations include a tremendous effort around auto device configuration and interoperability between video devices at other companies. Best of all, through our cloud service companies can have this solution for about the same price as a phone service, without investing tens of thousands of dollars in network infrastructure and on top of that a savvy video specialist to run it all.

Today’s article was a wake-up call to the world’s companies running video conferencing: Put your systems out on the public Internet at your peril. Enterprise video devices will need to follow a similar path as the VoIP world. IT professionals will need to both secure video conferencing systems behind the firewall AND at the same time make it more open for others to call (it is a communication device after all). So, IT people: What are you waiting for?

Light Reading recently highlighted two obstacles to widespread video conferencing adoption: the interconnection of multiple videoconferencing providers and the traversal of enterprise firewalls, two of Vidtel’s core competencies.

The industry’s largest video conferencing vendors, such as LifeSize Communications, are currently advocating HD video conferencing services that can connect not only high-end telepresence systems, but also video conferencing rooms, PCs, and even mobile devices (via audio or lower-end video), primarily for business purposes. Light Reading quotes Michael Helmbrecht, vice president of product marketing for LifeSize, as seeing “a significant role for service providers in stimulating the market for high-quality videoconferencing and making it more easily accessible to, and cost-effective for, enterprise users.”

Helmbrecht observes that service providers have a substantial role in expanding the high-quality video conferencing market, since they can break down the difficult barriers companies have for video conferencing with employees, partners, customers, suppliers, patients, and students.

Although the article focuses on managed services (operated by large service providers such as Glowpoint and Verizon and targeted to the large enterprise), Vidtel provides hosted services that can help companies of any size overcome hurdles to video conferencing, both from a pricing, usability and interoperability standpoint.

Our outsourced solution enables businesses to connect hassle-free across companies with standards-based, high-definition video conferencing equipment for a simple monthly fee (instead of thousands of dollars of investment in infrastructure and IT support). We provide interoperability with most reasonably-priced ($50-$5000+) standard video conferencing devices, as well as addressing, firewall traversal and server configurations for HD video conferencing.

For the full article on how video conferencing vendors seek to work with service providers to expand the video conferencing market, visit LifeSize Shapes Up for Managed Video Services.