Tandberg and Nortel team for telepresence: what about Microsoft?

By Stuart Corner
Saturday, 22 March 2008 11:23

Opinion and Analysis

The market for telepresence - virtual reality videoconferencing is tipped to take off. The announcement of a tie-up between Tandberg and Nortel raises questions about Microsoft's role in the market -given the strong unified communications relationship between Nortel and Microsoft.

There are many predictions  that high-grade high definition 'virtual reality' videoconferencing will grow significantly as organisations seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions and has security issues make international travel more difficult.

Cisco has been one of the leaders in the market  and for a year now has its telepresence facilities installed in Sydney and Melbourne (they are reported very heavily used). When it demonstrates its system Cisco can boast of its tight integration with its IP telephony and unified communications products: conference bookings are set up through the calendaring system and can be initiated with via a telephone handset.

More specialist telepresence system manufacturers such as Tandberg and Polycom might not so easily be able to achieve this: hence this week's announcement of a relationship between Tandberg and Nortel to deliver fully-managed telepresence services globally "built on unified communications from Nortel and open standards-based video solutions from Tandberg."

Through a non-exclusive global agreement announced at the VoiceCon show in Orlando Florida, Nortel and Tandberg will jointly deliver -managed telepresence and high-definition video conferencing solutions to enterprises worldwide. These will be offered through service providers or direct from Nortel.

According to Dietmar Wendt, president, global services for Nortel. "Ours is a fully-managed service, delivered over an enterprise's IP network with no impact to existing VoIP and data applications." CONTINUED

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