One of the most common questions we hear at NextGen Reporting is whether we use Skype or WebEx technology for our remote depositions. The short answer is those free, consumer-grade technologies are great for staying in touch with friends and family, but they don’t meet the needs of our clients for depositions.

When we created NextGen Reporting, we evaluated all of the low-cost options for video connections such as Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting, etc.

We chose not to use free, consumer-grade software for a few key reasons:

• Our clients need the ability to connect via computers AND videoconferencing endpoints using IP or ISDN, which cannot be done with WebEx or Skype.
• Our clients need the ability to save a copy of the video stream in an easy-to-use MPEG4 file as opposed to the proprietary WRF file.
• Our clients have a wide range of bandwidth levels, and these levels can fluctuate widely during the deposition. Our technology uses SVC (Scalable Video Codec) technology to deal with the ups and downs of our client bandwidth. It also means that higher-bandwidth users will see better quality, while the content to lower-bandwidth clients will accommodate their connections as well.
• Our clients need clear audio without any echoes. Neither Skype nor WebEx have reliable echo cancellation.
• Our clients connect from a range of networks, some of which have heavy-duty firewalls. We needed a solution which can traverse through any firewall to ensure easy, reliable connections.
• Our clients need the highest level of security: our technology uses 128-bit AES encryption which meets HIPAA standards for video transmission. The most security that can be added on top of Skype and WebEx is SSL.
• Our clients need to share documents easily from the deposition and record the interaction with the document. WebEx was created to be a document-sharing platform, and video was recently added in, while Skype is primarily a video platform which just added screen-sharing capabilities. Our clients need reliable, secure video and document sharing.

Clearly WebEx and Skype have their place in the consumer market, but they do not meet the needs of our clients.

If you want to see our technology in action, please drop us a line. We’d be delighted to show you how we meet – and exceed – the needs of our clients.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2012 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Company News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.