ABSTRACT
The Multimedia desktop conferencing includes desktop audio/video teleconferencing and, optionally, voice/video mail, integrated with text/image shared screen capabilities. This chapter focuses on some fundamental concepts which are key to understanding the systems in question. Communication between remote parties is as old as the oldest form of postal service. The users’ perception of the performance of any communication system is a complicated function of human factors whose relative importance is highly personalised. The system in question would be a multimedia desktop conferencing system. The network architecture which is most suitable for real–time communication is different from that which is most suitable for communications that can tolerate variable and/or long delay. The term open systems orientation denotes the quality of being open to interconnection with dissimilar systems, open to extensions, tolerant to changes of hardware platforms and tolerant of applications sharing the platform. The successful large–scale introduction of multimedia desktop conferencing should be attempts as part of a business re–engineering process.
