The Boardroom ReInvented

AT&T has teamed up with Cisco to take telepresence to the next level. They are re-introducing Telepresence as "The Boardroom Reinvented". Here is what was recently said by Cisco and AT&T TelePresence Live at NRF 2009 with Coach, Planet Retail, Polo Ralph Lauren, & United Rentals.

Gartner’s Top Predictions for 2009 Include Telepresence

Gartner Predicts Video Telepresence Will Replace 2.1 Million Airline Seats Per Year by 2012, Losing the Travel Industry $3.5 billion annually

Analysts detail Gartner's Top Ten Predictions for 2009 and beyond at 'Gartner Predicts 2009' in Sydney

"Telepresence is not the answer in every circumstance and there will always be strong cultural and other reasons for face to face encounters, particularly in Asia. But not every meeting needs to be face to face..." -- Gartner's Steve Prentice

Sydney, Australia, The challenge of current world economic conditions is set to drive uptake of video telepresence in the next three years, with the travel industry losing out, according to Gartner Inc. Gartner analysts predict that high-definition based video meeting solutions will replace 2.1 million airline seats annually, costing the travel and hospitality industry US$3.5 billion per year.

Speaking at the annual Gartner Predicts 2009 briefing in Sydney this morning, Gartner Fellow Steve Prentice said companies must educate themselves on the scope and capabilities of telepresence systems.

"The challenge of the current economic conditions demands that every organization revisit the need for face-to-face meetings" said Mr Prentice. "Telepresence is not the answer in every circumstance and there will always be strong cultural and other reasons for face to face encounters, particularly in Asia. But not every meeting needs to be face to face and there is no doubt that telepresence and other approaches to virtual collaboration such as Immersive Workspace, which is built on top of Second Life, or yet to be released solutions will provide a real alternative for many businesses. Companies should put aside previous prejudices and bad memories of older video-conferencing services and seriously investigate these new technologies"

Original Article….

AT&T Makes $1 Billion Network Infrasructure Investment

AT&T is upgrading network applications such as its VPN, telepresence, unified communications and hosting offerings. The company will expand its network offerings into Asia by offering telepresence in China for the first time and managed IP telephony and LAN services for the first time in China, India, the Philippines and Thailand. AT&T will also increase its data center hosting capacity in three of its U.S. data centers, as well as data centers in Tokyo, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

Complete Article:

Telepresence to replace 2.1 million airline seats, says Gartner
February 11, 2009 Chris Payatagool
Written by Vera Alves Gartner expects video telepresence to replace 2.1 million airline seats per year, by 2012, losing the travel industry $ US 3.5 billion.This was one of the top ten predictions that Gartner announced this week in Auckland, during a local briefing where researchers discussed emerging trends and technologies.According to Stephen Prentice, VP and Gartner Fellow, "videoconferencing has changed and telepresence does manage to fool the brain."Both because of environmental and cost-cutting reasons, Gartner expects the adoption of telepresence to be one of the major trends for the near future. "People will be travelling for leisure, not for business," added Prentice.Cisco and HP were the first major companies to launch telepresence suites but the business is still evolving, with Nortel, Tandberg and LifeSize also adding telepresence to their lists of products.

The economic downturn can even be seen as an opportunity for technologies such as this to experience further growth, thanks to the need to cut back on costs.The Cisco offices in Auckland were recently the stage for young players to audition for the Southbank Sinfonia, in the UK, when a panel of judges listened and watched the aspiring New Zealand musicians' 15- minute auditions from the other side of the world."This process represents a world first for the professional music scene and promises to change the way orchestras recruit new players now and in the future," commented Justin Lee, Southbank Sinfonia's Chief Executive.

Telepresence and VC Insight Ranks IVCi Among Best Managed Conferencing Services Providers for 2008
IVCi was chosen because its IntelliNet MCS® Managed Conferencing Service is well-established and highly reliable.
Hauppauge, NY (PRWEB) February 16, 2009 -- IVCi, LLC (www.ivci.com), a leading integrator of enterprise collaboration solutions including high definition video conferencing, telepresence, audio visual integration, and managed conferencing services, announced today that it has been named one of the Best Managed Conferencing Service Providers for 2008 by Telepresence and Videoconferencing Insight newsletter.
"IVCi was chosen as one of the best managed conferencing service providers because its IntelliNet MCS® Managed Conferencing Service is well-established and highly reliable, and was used successfully by many large corporate clients last year," said Richard Line, editor of Telepresence and VC Insight...... (More)

Bad economy lifts telepresence sales
Feb 6, 2009 10:42 AM, By Carol Wilson

Enterprises see cost savings, productivity gains in managed telepresence services from AT&T, BT, others
Telepresence services, and especially managed telepresence services, are weathering the current economic storm, according to multiple providers and vendors, but the sales tactics for these services are changing somewhat.

“To be honest, we are seeing telepresence take off like crazy,” said Jeff Prestel, general manager of the video solutions division at BT, which this week announced it was adding Polycom telepresence gear to its managed services offering. “You would think with the current economic challenges, given it’s a high-ticket item, that would be the first thing people would stop spending on, but we are seeing even more interest – our fastest area of growth is in telepresence. It is growing rapidly.”....

Changing sales tactics

It was once possible to sell telepresence primarily as a means to reduce executive travel costs, but while that is still a compelling argument for some companies, it doesn’t work as simply as it used to, Alan Benway, executive director of AT&T Telepresence solutions said.

“Some companies now say they’ve eliminated their travel budget altogether, because of the economy,” the AT&T executive said. “We believe that travel reduction is just the tip of the iceberg. Telepresence, with the ability to collaborate in a face-to-face way on short notice, can help a company do business in new and better ways. If you are thinking about that – ‘Can I bring my products to market more quickly, and what is that worth to me?’ – it’s a different way to prove the value of telepresence. Even if travel were free, there’s still that efficiency. How long does it take somebody to travel to China or Europe or cross-country? These are often highly paid knowledge workers and executives. What is the cost to quality of life?”

more can be found here

Teleris Takes Another Step in Creating the "Natural" Telepresence Experience

In a recent article there was discussion to the many creative aspects mcessary to helping drive the teepresence experience. As Wainhouse Research have pointed out in their well documented white paper, three things need to be present for Telepresence to be truly valuable. They are the expereince must seem natural (the lifelike hd video, is a big step), this Teliris technology is another major step in meeting criteria #1. Second, telepresence must have the audio and video be synchonized and finally, (three) it must be simple to set up.

The people at Teliris have thrown some interesting info here:
Over the past three months (that would be Q3) meetings increased by 20-25% (Teliris also manages the service, so they have insight into these data).
The average use of the system at Teliris' customers is an impressive 125 hr/mo, or 6 hr/day (for comparison: the average use of videoconferencing is 10.5 hr/mo).
Check out this 8 minute YouTube video (embedded below) done by Marc and available on his blog too (the last minute or so is the coolest!). He demos the Teliris InterACT TouchTable ("no, this is not the Microsoft surface table"). Really amazing to see how he pushes a document across the ocean. (Adapted from http://telcommunicator.blogspot.com/)

View, this video below. You will be amazed as Teliris CEO Marc Trachtenberg, literally pushes a video from New York City across the "table" to a colleague in London.

Cisco and IBM Enhance Banking Experience with Cisco TelePresence and Optimized Self-Service

Companies Will Deliver Enhanced Joint Front Office Solutions for Retail Banking
SAN JOSE, Calif., and ARMONK, N.Y. - November 18, 2008 - Cisco and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of two additional offerings for enhancing the retail banking experience that build on their Front Office Solutions for Retail Banking announced in November 2007. The Optimized Self-Service and Cisco TelePresenceTM solution modules help enable retail banks to use their experts more efficiently for direct client interaction regardless of where they are located or which delivery channel (e.g. phone, Internet, video, telepresence, etc.) they are using for communications.
Today, financial institutions are working closer with customers to provide more personalized and up-to-date products and services that better meet their customers' changing financial needs. Independent of the time of day or the delivery channel that clients utilize, banks are striving to deploy technologies and information technology (IT) architectures that help improve business processes to optimize a collaborative customer experience.



Complete Article....

Christopher Mines - Senior Vice President Forrester Research

Since publishing seminal research on "The Greening of IT" in 2007, Chris has become one of the leading analysts of the trend toward more environmentally responsible computing. He regularly speaks at industry events and with top-tier media outlets on green IT topics, especially the interplay of enterprise requirements and adoption with supplier strategies and business models.

WHY GREEN IT MATTERS Christopher Mines, Euan Davis

Green IT is part of a fundamental change in the economy and society. It is a subset of the larger green (or sustainable) business trend, which reconciles sustainable business practices with profitable business operations. In the IT industry, both suppliers and buyers are coming to realize that they should incorporate green principles into the design, manufacturing, operation, and disposal of IT assets. The impetus for this change comes from a variety of sources:

Government mandates. Regulators in the EU, the US, and elsewhere are aggressively policing aspects of IT products and operations, including toxic materials used in building computing gear, disposal of electronic equipment, and emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases caused by power consumption and other sources.

Energy efficiency. Companies buying more energy-efficient IT equipment get the dual benefit of lowering their utility bills while also reducing their carbon footprint. Server and storage virtualization, for example, can deliver considerable savings in energy consumption as well as decreasing physical waste.

Product and company differentiation. Banking on growing consumer demand for green products and services, some retailers have developed "sub-brands" with a green angle, such as Home Depot's Eco Options label. Increasingly, manufacturers across industries will use green products and green corporate behavior as a way to appeal to this growing segment of customers.

CSR. CSR initiatives enhance the brands of companies by helping them stand out as those that care about the communities they operate within. Going green is part of any CSR agenda because of the prominence of global warming concerns.

This is excerpted from a larger paper on this subject avaialble here.

Listen to Forrester analyst Christopher Mines discuss the role of collaborative technologies in assisting with environmental sustainability initiatives

AT&T and Cisco have a unique telepresence joint offer.

There are two unique features of the AT&T/Cisco telepresence solution offers over other solutions are:

1. AT&T offers this as a fully managed service that includes all of the equipment as part of the solution. This means there is minimal "up-front" equipment costs to commit to.
2. The AT&T Business Exchange offers interconnectivity between any two endpoints on the AT&T Telepresence network. The way that telepresence has been offered in the past requires that the business be fully responsible for the supporting "mpls" network that undergirds the quality of the solution. This means that a business could insure the quality of the connectivity between their own locaitons, but they were essentially "locked" into their own network. This makes the telepresence solution more valuable, since many more site locations are avaialable on this network.

Below is short video with two executives from AT&T and Cisco discussing this breakthrough offer.

One of the most difficult questions to answer in the use of Telepresence is the cost benefit conundrum. As this paper illustrates, there are significant benefits to telepresence that go beyond historical webmeetings and traditional video-conferencing.

In their summary the Wainhouse Research Group conclude:

"Clearly, telepresence systems are delivering the remote meeting experience, including audio-video quality, ease-of-use, and realistic face-to-face environment that executives, product planners, and business managers want. Whether used in business negotiations, candidate job interviews, sales calls, or plain team meetings, telepresence systems are providing business professionals the ability to reduce travel while attending more meetings at the same time. The proof lies in the fact that companies who have deployed telepresence solutions find their systems are used more heavily than is the case for typical videoconferencing room systems. Although costly at first, telepresence systems have successfully addressed the limitations of typical videoconferencing designs. "

You can find a copy of their January 28, 2008 paper entitled "Telepresence vs. Videoconferencing Resolving the Cost/Benefit Conundrum"

By fully leveraging the power of the Internet, telepresence provides a truly viable alternative to business travel. A generation or more beyond video conferencing, telepresence creates an
environment where real-to-life participants interact in a shared boardroom, even though they might be separated by tens of thousands of miles. By replacing the need to transport humans to meetings around the globe, it’s fast becoming the ideal way to lower corporate carbon footprints and protect the environment, creating a significant return on investment and boosting productivity.

So begins a white paper on this subject in an article entitled: "Telepresence: reducing the impact of business travel"