Cisco makes massive commitment to Telepresence

Stuart Corner
Monday, 19 March 2007 05:23

Your IT - Home IT

Cisco has cut travel budgets globally and is installing a global network of its TelePresence 'virtual reality' videoconferencing centres to boost the use alternatives to face-to-face meetings.

 

Cisco announced TelePresence last October. It is  a videoconferencing system and service that uses virtual reality techniques to much more closely emulate real face-to-face interactions than current systems are able to achieve.

Last week, at the first public demonstration of the system in Australia, Ross Fowler, CEO of Cisco Australia told reporters: "Our CEO John Chambers has cut travel budgets by 20 percent and is installing 52 of these systems in Cisco facilities around the world."

He said that TelePresence was "not a videoconferencing system: it requires an architectural approach. We have had to introduce capabilities into our network and into CallManager [Cisco's IP PBX product]. There is an integrated approach between the CPE and the network."

Fowler added that this tight integration between the network and end user services represented a trend that would become increasingly apparent in Cisco's approach to the market. "We have come the conclusion that the network is no longer just a means of connecting computers. It is a way of connecting people and you will see in Cisco's marketing that we will talk more and more about the human network: one that allows people to communication and collaborate more effectively."

Fowler's comments come in the wake of Cisco's announcement that it is to pay $US3.2 billion for web collaboration specialist, WebEx.

The key to the Telepresence system is very high definition video, video screens that are big enough to represent people life size and spatial audio so that the sound source for the remote viewer always appears to be the person speaking. Each screen requires between 2Mbps and 4Mbps of bandwidth. The system comes in a three screen or one screen version and each 65 inch screen is able to represent two people side by side life size.