Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing is quickly making its way up the telecommunications ladder proving itself to be a sought after communications solution for thousands of businesses, both large and small. Video Conferencing is providing the answer to so many business issues, cutting costs and time lapses it is a slicker way of managing your communications.

When it comes to your business meetings, video conferencing slashes hefty travel expenses offering virtual face to face meetings without the need to travel for hundreds of miles, allowing you to get the job done more efficiently. Not only this but with video conferencing not only are you cutting costs but just think of the time you’ll be saving yourself. Many business meetings require long car journeys and in a lot of cases a flight which can take the best part of the day before you’ve even begun to discuss business. Yet with video conferencing with a mere switch of a button or click of a mouse your meeting can commence resulting in quicker decision making and consequently more time spent on growing your business.

So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with Elite Telecom today and streamline your business with the advancements you need to run a successful business.

As your business expands, so do your avenues of contact.  Although it is often said that increased distance is to blame for the breakdown in communication, the secret is a unified comms system. By bringing everyone together through a unified communications (UC) platform, you’re literally taking out the middle man, and integrating your various communicative services into one single interface.  Pulling together a host of different communication modes including video conferencing, mobile communication, email, voicemail, instant messaging and VoIP, means that you only have to answer to one solution – unified communications.

With more and more businesses interacting on a global scale, it’s common for people to be working from home or utilising satellite offices as a means of staying in touch, regardless of physical location.  Connecting your team onto one platform ensures better team collaboration – allowing online meetings to be scheduled more easily or for spur-of-the-moment reviews to take place.

Quite simply, unified communications can do wonders for your business, including:

• Telephony.  Connecting various phone devices means you can call your co-worker by name, and not by extension;


• Presence.  By identifying a person’s availability, it will be easier for people to know when you’re in or out of the office, without wasting time running around trying to locate you.


• Instant messaging.  Talking as a pair or in groups wherever you are means less restrictions, as well as making file sharing simpler.

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust is set to save £225,000 by implementing a Siemens Enterprise Communications VoIP platform along with new video conferencing systems.

According to a report by Forrester the Trust will save money by decommissioning 2,500 leased Centrex telephone lines and will also significantly reduce travel expenditure thanks to the system's video conferencing capabilities.

The Trust expects to save £1.65 million over a seven year period but taking into consideration the costs of installing the new hardware and software as well as the labour costs the company will save £225,000 over the same period. But after the initial costs of installation the trust can only continue to save money in future.

VoIP and video conferencing can hugely benefit your business’s communications and significantly cut costs, so for the latest in such telecommunication systems look no further than Elite Telecom.

Many Facebook users last week enthused over the social media site’s newest release – of video conferencing.  Their technology has now made it available for 750 million people to use video chat through globally popular VoIP service, Skype, where Facebook users can invite their friends to simply by clicking on a video camera icon (after completing a download of the application).

“You’re going to have more and more competition between Facebook and Google,” commented businessweek.com analyst Ben Schachter.  “The two companies are going to be battling it out for some time to come.”

But what does this mean for businesses?  With several organisations strong advocates of Skype, is there really any need to encourage social networking – especially with video conferencing technology?

Whilst the use of Skype on Facebook is similar to the basic Skyping process, other features include the integration of your Facebook and Skype accounts to allow friends to view as well as comment and like on news feeds.  Shortly after Zuckerberg’s announcement, over 5 million Facebook customers went to download the application, with the service receiving a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

However, Tony Bradley of PC World commented that the absence of group video chat technology with Skype on Facebook should not put business users off.  Free and extremely simple to navigate, the idea of face-to-face virtual meetings could in fact benefit productivity.  And with over 750 million users actively using the service, Bradley states: “you can be almost certain that whoever you want to speak to is out there – and because people spend more time on Facebook than any other online destination, odds are fair they’re online and waiting for your video chat.”

Is this something your business could ‘like’?  Let us know your thoughts.

Video conferencing can help patients with chronic illnesses keep in regular contact with healthcare professionals. For those too unwell to leave their homes a video conferencing solution is being hailed as the newest advancement in doctor to patient care.

Speaking to National Public Radio, Dr Ray Dorsey explained he uses a unified communications solution to connect with patients, some of whom live hundreds of miles away from his surgery in Baltimore, US.

Enjoying the advantages of a video conferencing system, Dr Dorsey explained of his hope that other medical workers will be inspired to use the service in the same way.

He points out that for people suffering with chronic illnesses; video conferencing can help healthcare professionals ‘remove the geographical boundaries’ standing in the way of their care.

Elite Telecom are proud to announce the acquisition of Cardiff-based business phone systems provider XL Networks Ltd, with the agreement completed last week.  With an addition of over 800 new customers, this marks an exciting time for CEO Matt Newing – providing both an increase in revenue as well as a range of innovative telecommunications solutions.

Reaching out to further regions will benefit the group, offering consumers competitive prices as well as excellent customer service – important factors that have helped make Elite Telecom the UK’s leading telecommunications service.  Providing an outstanding selection of products such as business mobiles and videoconferencing technology, Elite Telecom boasts an incredible turnover of over £18 million; featuring the likes of Intercontinental Hotels, Air France and an array of Premier League football clubs to an already impressive client base.

Remaining ‘quietly hopeful’ that the deal will lead to more opportunities in the telecommunications industry, Newing explained: “We have been able to maintain and strengthen our market position despite the economic downturn.  Our strategy has been to achieve organic expansion through innovation that keeps us ahead of the game, while being able to identify and respond nimbly to positive acquisition opportunities.

“This latest deal reflects our ambitions and will help to solidify our prominence in the business telecoms industry and we are quietly hopeful that it won’t be the last in the near future.  Alongside this activity, we are constantly aiming to stay on the cusp of development by ascertaining brand new services to offer our new and established client base.

“It also presents an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our bespoke products and services, such as Elite IQ, a sophisticated call queuing system that reduces waiting time by allowing callers to hang up and call back at an allocated time when they will be placed at the front of the queue.”

For more information on why we’re the only business telecommunications provider to appear in the Tech Track 3 Times, visit Elite Telecom - where we always put our customers at the front of the queue.

For a long time, unified communications dominated the IT stage - but it has since been pushed out of the limelight by a newer piece of technology; video conferencing. The “prognosis for its use in healthcare appears to hold promise,” reported one expert, with virtual meetings providing several benefits especially for use especially in the medicine sector.

Thanks to advancing trends in technology, media can be implemented far more effectively – with sound and video coming together to deliver time and cost effective communications solutions.

President and CEO of BurstPoint Networks, Tom Racca, explained the advantages behind uniting staff and customers instantly on a global platform: “Healthcare has always been a progressive field and those involved – from researchers to physicians to IT leaders – are driven to find better, more efficient methods,” he says.

Racca has come up with 4 important factors imperative to healthcare providers when employing videoconferencing:

Care of patients – Patients can now conduct medical appointments from the comfort of their own home;

Compliance and training – Live stream training allows videos to be accessed whenever and wherever;

Collaboration – Meetings can now be held with other healthcare professionals, allowing ideas to be exchanged over a virtual forum;

Communications command and control – The provision of videoconferencing allows for the distribution of messages to be passed quicker, unifying several departments within a medical authority.

Whilst many healthcare organisations are slowly discovering the advantages behind videoconferencing, Racca believes the technology will improve and increase quality in years to come.

See if virtual meetings are a part of your company’s future, with our exclusive videoconferencing technology available at Elite Telecom.

It has been revealed that the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and Sutton Council are to merge their IT departments in 2012, say sources.

Lead information technology business partner for Kingston council, David Grasty, has explained the reason for the merge as an attempt at cutting costs, whilst also providing a more secure IT framework to both councils.

“We have got to take about 33 per cent out of the budget over the next four years,” he said during discussions with network manufacturer Netgear in London.

“About 40 per cent is coming from staff reductions, other [initiatives include] reviewing supplier contracts, and we will be merging our IT with Sutton.”

Last year, the two London councils both agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) as part of an effort to work in partnership, announcing last month a merge of their environmental services operations.

Grasty stated that the merged IT departments will consist of application support, desktop and project management as well as infrastructure.  Another solution the councils were exploring was that of collaborative technologies such as virtual meetings, in order to reduce the costs of employees travelling within boroughs sharing the same services.

“Video conferencing wasn’t on our agenda six months ago because of the nature of our borough [the council sites were close together].  There was no business case for it.”

As well as the merge of IT technologies, Kingston and Sutton are also included in a cloud scheme with Richmond and Wandsworth councils for the integration of fibre links between the districts in order to share work schedules.