From an IT perspective, though, the advent of video can be a challenge. First, there's the bandwidth consumption. Even with modestly sized screens, HD video can consume a couple of Mbps per user, easy. That may not sound like a lot, but the typical branch office is still often served by a T1 — which means a single video call could swamp the connection. So IT pros need to plan ahead, and make sure there's plenty of bandwidth available.

There's also the problem of ensuring quality of service (QoS). An MPLS network will get you what you need on the WAN — but only about half of the folks we work with are deploying MPLS's QoS capabilities, because it can be tricky to set up effectively. To ensure effective QoS in the WAN, you need to map applications to QoS types — then make sure you've got adequate congestion control and QoS in the LAN.

Finally, you need to think in terms of managing and monitoring the video traffic. Most organizations don't perform detailed analysis of WAN traffic at all, so managing video represents a bit of a sea shift in thinking.

None of these are insurmountable, of course — but there's a bit more to enabling videoconferencing than just plugging in the unit and turning on the monitor. And there's at least one risk that's overrated. They say video killed the radio star — but I rather suspect that'll be news to Howard Stern.