Enterprise Briefing

Seeing is believing

Telepresence, videoconferencing's big brother, promises to dramatically reduce corporate travels costs by being a genuine alternative to face-to-face meetings. High definition video, three-dimensional (3D) spatial sound and abundant bandwidth combine to make virtual meetings seem almost real as if you were sharing the same room as the conference attendees.

A typical high-end telepresence system such as the Cisco CTS-3000 comprises three closely-joined HD plasma screens, a semi-circular desk large enough for six people and 3D spatial sound. These are all housed in a room set up specifically for telepresence meetings. “The table butts against the plasma screen at both ends to give you the visual illusion that it’s one single large conference table,” says Howard Brown, Integration Services Business Unit, Orange Business Services. “Once you are in one of these rooms, after a while you will forget you are conferencing. The quality is so good, and with the ease of operation, you forget about all the technology, it’s so natural.”

Between three HD plasma screens there is a very small frame but it is not invasive. Above the centre screen is a camera console with three lenses pointing around the desk. Attendees appear life-size, and directional microphones and speakers give a 3D impression. They pick up where the sound originates and deliver it to the equivalent position in the remote telepresence room. Another key factor is a very high bandwidth connection, typically between 11-14Mbps. The network specification ensures there is an extremely low latency of less than 150 milliseconds, and that voices are in sync with mouths.

“The telepresence experience is so impressive that it will raise the bar for other visual communications,” says Brown. “We expect more, and we will get more, from other forms of videoconferencing as a result.  A bit like HDTV – once you’ve experienced the superior quality, the old standard seems poor by comparison”

Telepresence benefits are tangible: executives can make decisions more quickly and dispersed team working can be vastly improved. “Telepresence is more than just a straight swap for face-to-face meetings,” says Brown. “With telepresence on hand, you can get your senior decisions makers together more frequently and at shorter notice than would have been possible before. It’s a net gain for meetings.”

substantial investments

High-end telepresence systems do have expensive upfront and ongoing costs compared to simple videoconferencing, but they can generate an ROI quicker simply because they are used much more often. According to consultancy the Human Productivity Lab, traditional video conferencing systems are used around 15 hours per month while telepresence rooms tend to have a much higher utilization rate, in excess of 120 hours a month. This is mainly because people are much more prepared to replace face-to-face meetings with telepresence.

Analyst Wainhouse Research calculates that if employees earn $80,000 a year and travel to three meetings per month with four participants, a company can save approximately $110,000 in year one, if 10 employees conduct 40% of meetings with telepresence.

But it’s not just avoiding face-to-face meetings. Once a telepresence room is installed, it can be an ideal place for team meetings with distributed team members. These would normally be conducted on an audio bridge, but full visual communication enhances the meeting and ensures a closer connection between the team.

“There are some people who would never choose video conferencing over face-to-face. Others would choose audio conferencing to video. But telepresence will now be their first choice – better than traveling, audioconferencing and videoconferencing,” says Brown. “The higher the utilization rate, the better. More people use it, the quicker the ROI.”

Wainhouse Research looked at the payback period of a high-end telepresence system. It assumes that a system costs around $300,000 and bandwidth around $8,000 per month. Over a three-year period, if the room is used for 20 hours a week, meetings would cost just over $200 an hour. At 30 hours a week, it would cost just $125 an hour.

proof of the pudding

The proof of the telepresence concept is how it is used in a business environment. Cisco has been using its own telepresence technology since October 2006. It now has over 200 telepresence rooms and has conducted 90,000 meetings to date – 14,400 of which included participants that avoided traveling because of telepresence. Cisco calculates that this has amounted to $103 million in travel avoidance. A further $60 million has been gained from productivity benefits.

Cisco’s telepresence solutions are not limited to large conferencing systems. It also includes CTS-1000, a two-person, 65-inch plasma system which can interoperate with the six-person solution. Both systems can operate in point-to-point or multipoint modes with the addition of Cisco Telepresence Multipoint Switch. It is even possible to run multipoint sessions with some other types of videoconferencing products though many of the benefits of telepresence will be lost. Other ‘soon to be released’ options include inter-company telepresence with other Cisco Telepresence systems on the same managed IP network, and eventually inter-service provider ‘meshing’.

Orange will be one of Cisco's first partners to achieve Global Telepresence Authorized Telepresence Provider (ATP) status. This means that it will be able to install, maintain and manage Cisco’s market leading telepresence solutions in all global theatres. It has regional teams of trained telepresence professionals and initial demonstration sites being deployed in Atlanta, Slough and Paris, with at least four other sites planned within 2008. Orange’s Cisco-certified telepresence network offer provides a latency of less than 150 milliseconds and 99.999% availability. Network connectivity is available as a class-of-service on an Orange Adaptive VPN or through dedicated Orange telepresence access.