Telepresence Wins With Simplicity, Enhanced Ambience

In today’s dynamic business environment, the most important benefit comes from having a good communication system. This has led to ongoing adoption of Telepresence solutions among enterprises to facilitate communication among their knowledge workers and increase collaboration with customers and partners across the globe. Rajesh K K, business development manager–Telepresence Systems, Cisco India and SAARC, sheds light on the telepresence industry in an interview with Biztech2.com.

What are the recent developments in the telepresence industry?

As convergence brings voice, data, and video onto the same network, new technologies are redefining the rules of collaboration. Today, networks are becoming increasingly scalable and enterprises are realising the benefits of having all the applications on the same network. The real impact of conferencing technology can only be realised when the user’s experience is close to a face-to-face meeting, and telepresence in this respect has already started revolutionising room-based videoconferencing services. Solution providers such as Tata Communications and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra have begun offering telepresence services on a pay-per-use basis.

Could you share details of such projects enabled by Cisco?

With the arrival of public telepresence rooms in Indian Hotels, viz. Marriott International and Starwood Hotels, individuals now have the flexibility to pay on an hourly basis to avail of these services. Cisco Telepresence, along with its partners Tata Communications and AT&T, supports the largest network of public telepresence rooms and services, which have been deployed in 45 locations around the world. CII has also set up four pay-per-use centres within its facilities.

Additional infrastructure development including global directory, scheduling, payment and settlement modules to enable partner deployments is expected in the near term. Also, eight global carriers such as AT&T, BT, Orange, NTT, Tata Communications, Telefonica, Telstra, and most recently Telmex have announced inter-company Cisco Telepresence services covering more than 150 countries in five continents.

Do you think the recent slowdown has led to the growth of UC adoption?

The current slowdown has created quite a few market opportunities for the Indian UC industry. As UC applications become more prevalent in the extended workspace, more organisations are realising the associated benefits. Results documented by Sage Research demonstrate a multitude of benefits—both in terms of employee time savings and financial savings.

Some findings are as follows:

• Organisations using UC clients saved an average of 32 minutes daily per employee as the telepresence technology enabled staff to reach one another on the first try.
• Use of soft phones resulted in an average savings of $1,727 per month in cell phone and long distance charges. Mobile workers also saved 40 minutes each day, enjoyed greater business communications convenience, and generated annual productivity gains of 3.5 days per year.
• Organisations using Unified Messaging reported that employees saved 43 minutes per day from more efficient message management, while mobile workers saved 55 minutes per day.
• Companies using integrated voice and Web conferencing reported a 30 percent reduction in conferencing expenses by making integrated conferencing capabilities available in-house and on-network and an average savings of $1,700 per month in travel costs.
• For others, the savings may simply come from having reduced hardware requirements and operating expenses.

When virtual platforms like Second Life are available, what according to you is the USP of Telepresence?

The appeal of Second Life will always be there but solutions like Telepresence will have more appeal because of their simplicity and the apt ambience.

One of the major complaints with options such as Virtual/ Second Life is that they are too complex to set up and operate. Whereas, in case of telepresence, it is as simple as pressing a single button. In addition, telepresence solutions typically include no user-configurable settings such as call speed, camera pan-tilt-zoom or intimidating hand-held remotes to confuse customers.

A successful telepresence experience offers more than just a successful video connection. The environment creates a reasonable illusion that the remote participants are in the same room. The systems strive to make the technology invisible to the user: microphones, speakers, cameras, etc are hidden. Another important part of the meeting environment is created with room lighting and acoustics. These factors are necessary as business talks should take place in an environment, which is as formal as possible.

Where do you see the telepresence industry heading with respect to the Indian market?

With India becoming a key component of the global technology industry, solutions such as telepresence have found tremendous acceptance amongst companies in the country. In addition, other businesses with global interests or regional offices of multi-national corporations are also investing in telepresence systems to aid collaboration and to speed decision-making. So far, keen adoption of telepresence has been shown by companies, which have offices in multiple locations, nationwide, or around the globe, and can find it easier to justify the RoI of telepresence solutions. In fact, even organisations with multiple offices within the same city are setting up telepresence rooms to help executives collaborate without having to move out of their work premises.

What are the next-generation conferencing devices and compression technologies?

One of the much-anticipated next-generation conferencing technologies lies in mobile phones. In fact recently, AT&T improved its offer for the Cisco Telepresence service. AT&T, along with Cisco, has started a collaboration wherein iPhone users can conduct meetings on their phones, which are encrypted for business and security reasons. With this new solution, companies can now use collaboration tools that improve productivity and help reduce costs such as business travel.