Why it`s cool: The ability to show multimedia files within a video chat session was impressive -- in our tests, we could share a movie trailer and a supplied computer-aided design animation without any latency or jitter in the video. The video and audio quality was outstanding, definitely better than a standard Skype chat session.
Some caveats: Participants can only use SkyRoom if they`re connected to the same business network. People in two different geographic locations can only use SkyRoom if one of them has a VPN tunnel into the corporate network. HP says at least 1Mbps of bandwidth is needed between the sites for a single point-to-point connection. Businesses that are firewalled off from each other can`t use a SkyRoom video conference. Another downside: the ability to collaborate with colleagues is basically a "read only" scenario -- I could share a video or any part of my desktop with my colleague, but the colleague couldn`t "take over" and then edit or utilize the desktop (other Webconferencing services let participants share in this manner).
Bottom line: I can see employees using this for meetings where face-to-face contact is helpful, but collaboration is limited to "see what I`ve done here and tell me what you think" situations, rather than, "Here, see what I`ve done and you make the corrections." Standard "share the presentation" sessions that require a videoconference setting would also benefit from SkyRoom.
Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138707/Doing_more_with_video_chats?taxon
