Bigger travel budget or more video conferencing?

Next week Delta Airlines will double the fee it charges for a second checked bag to $50, continuing the relentless rise in the cost of travel. If you aren't already calculating how video conferencing can shave dollars from your travel budget, you ought to consider it.

There are many video conferencing product choices for business today and more coming on the market, many of which offer easy to use, high definition video and audio at reasonable costs.

Take Polycom Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif., for example. According to John Antanaitis, vice president of product marketing, in October the company will begin shipping its Converged Management Application (CMA) appliances, which has a little something for both IT and the end user.

The CMA 4000 will let IT provision the video services and apply policies using your existing LDAP or Active Directory. Through your network directory, you can define such things as rules for least-cost routing and dynamic bandwidth allocation priorities. And, Antanaitis says, the system also gives Windows users a simple client to create video conferencing contacts, check their availability, initiate two-way video sessions and, of course, watch their fellow conferees.

Paired with the company's RMX multipoint conferencing system, it lets users run interactive video conferences for numerous locations.

The system delivers 30 fps video in high definition and delivers stereo audio at 22 kHz. The CMA 4000 can handle up to 400 devices. Its big brother, the CMA 5000, supports up to 5,000 devices.

Pricing for 200 CMA 4000 device licenses starts at $20,000.