This month, Avistar Communications released their video conferencing predictions for 2010, and we’re going to take a look at them here.

Given the hullabaloo about “Enterprise 2.0” this year, it is highly likely that social networking integrations will become even more popular in the video conferencing sphere. Avistar projects that within the next two years, video conferencing capabilities will be a standard feature in major social networking platforms. The main obstacle, as they see it, is that social networks tend to be text- and link-based, so it will be a challenge for them to store messages on servers.

Another trend speaking to the universality of video conferencing: the ability to join conferences from multiple platforms. There are already a number of vendors offering solutions for smartphones, and Avistar predicts this will lead to a demand for phone-number free conferencing capabilities; users will expect one-click options and the ability to conference from anywhere.

Avistar also predicts there will be a rise in communications-enabled business processes (CEBP). They expect that companies using video conferencing services will be so pleased with the long-term rewards that they’ll integrate conferencing capabilities into existing business applications. This will also lead to more collaborative business environments—“collaboration” being another hot-button item this year. Video conferencing solutions will also continue to be more efficient, with lower power consumption and virtual desktop environments.

Lastly, Avistar believes there will be an increase in free trials. It’s smart of most companies to offer pilot packages, as this encourages more people to try the product at all. However, it could perhaps be difficult if a certain platform requires clunky legacy endpoints.