Aethra looks for the X-factor

摘要

Aethra, currently in fourth puce in the European videoconferencing systems market, has seen its revenues climb by 26 per cent and shipments rise by 23 per cent from the second half of 2004 to the first half of 2005. And since opening its London offices in March this year, Aethra has signed four direct partners — Impact Marcom, Team 4, Questmark and Video Nation — and has closed a deal with Vivenda Distribution to be its Irish distributor. In the past, Aethra told delegates to its annual partner meeting (held in Sardinia during late September), the stated benefits of videoconferencing were based upon reduction of expenses by saving the time and money spent on getting to the place of the meeting. This saving was a hard benefit and easy to measure. However, softer, hard to measure benefits — such as down time reduction, better communications and faster decision making — are coming to the fore. Better teamwork environments and shorter times to market are also being cited.