High-end videoconferencing: Finally for real? Maybe

During Tuesday's quarterly earnings call with analysts, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers mentioned in passing that orders of the company's telepresence units were up 500 percent year over year.

Considering the scope of Cisco's $10.4 billion in sales during the second quarter, this qualifies as relative chump change. The list price for the company's typical telepresence configuration is $299,000. Also, there's a difference between the way Cisco books orders and sales.

John Chambers and Al Gore in telepresence mode.

(Credit: Cisco)

Tech CEOs tend to lay it on a bit thick when talking up the bright spots in their business, and Chambers naturally couldn't resist seizing upon the telepresence statistics to proclaim video as "the killer app." But that's just John being John. No harm, no foul.

And, in this case, ignore the hyperbole and pay close attention to what the signposts mean. If you're looking for a silver lining to the ridiculous run-up in energy costs in the last year, this is it. The typical Fortune 500 company shells out a small fortune to jet its executives around the world each month: The World Travel & Tourism Council estimates that U.S. businesses spend some $179 billion on corporate travel annually.

Of course, Cisco's not the only game in town. The roster of manufacturers offering comparable videoconferencing packages for conducting virtual meetings include the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Teliris, Tandberg, and Polycom. (Also, there's IBM, which nearly a decade ago came out with Lotus Sametime, which merged Web videoconferencing with IM and audio-sharing capabilities.) The common idea of these and other similar products is to make participants in any virtual meeting appear and sound just as they might when attending a meeting in person.

In time, the system costs doubtless will come down--though obviously not to Kmart levels. But if energy prices suddenly plummet as fast as they climbed, might business buyers have a change of heart about investing in expensive teleconferencing systems? Their depth of conviction remains the $64,000 question.

When it comes to various telepresence incarnations, we're still talking about relatively few units at this stage and it's unclear whether we're on the cusp of a permanent or just temporary behavioral shift. Remember that after the Arab oil boycott in 1973, Americans began to embrace smaller, more gasoline-efficient automobiles. Unfortunately, that trend did not last long after prices at the pump returned to their historically cheap levels.

[benjaminstraight]

Let's hope for real.

[smilin:)]

Uh hello?

Microsoft has been offering this for over a year and it far exceeds what Cisco is "going to" offer. Go lookup OCS 2007 which clowns Lotus Sametime and Cisco. Checkout "Roundtable" especially.

[technewsjunkie]

We turned down MS's LIve Meeting. It was overly complicated, which is typical for Microsoft.
They still don't understand non-techies (that would be most of us).

[technewsjunkie]

Question for Coop, others:

Question: When/Will Web Conferencing, including Cisco's WebEx, REPLACE videoconferecing such as Polycom and Tandberg? (the way Intel's low cost chips - but increasingly faster - replaced Sun's Servers over time)

This was a session at last year's InfoComm and it was Standing Room Only with purchasing managers asking that question.

[Derekresler]

High-end easy-to-use video conferencing is already for real and AFFORDABLE through LifeSize (www.lifesize.com). LifeSize was awarded the top "Video Conferencing Company of the year" in 2007 by VC Insight. For about 5 G's you can have a high-definition system that is so easy a 5 year old can use it - basically any non techy can make a call, host multipoint conversations, and run presentation material. Plus, Face to Face Live (a tier one reseller: www.f2fl.com) can provide a managed service for you for pennies per month.

There is a reason why the BBC, Bell South, ActiVision (used LifeSize to develop Guitar Hero International - Sweet!) and Ohio State University uses LifeSize as opposed to Cicso and other high priced, hard to use systems.

[technewsjunkie]

5Gs is too costly. that's the point of my question. when will economies of scale and Secure technologies be implemented in run-of-the-mill web conferencing over broadband? I see the writing on the wall.

Currently you can have several "webcams" along with powerpoint using typical web conferencing apps.

[scollora]

No one pays the LIST PRICE so it's not really fair to post that in the article. Ask your Cisco rep for a "meeting on Cisco" using Telepresence and you'll understand that it's not video conferencing. Calling it video conferencing is like calling a Ferrari "a car."

[smilin:)]

Microsoft Livemeeting overly complicated?

Either you are spreading anti-MS FUD or your users are as intelligent as boiled asparagus.

You can sum up how to use every user-side feature in a two page document. The Document is almost entirely pictures!

Look I don't want to get into the usual back and forth on these comment boards. Lets let the public be the judge. Type the following keywords into a search engine: "livemeeting quick card" and it should take you right there.

[ajgillette98]

check out www.magorcorp.com

[toolit]

There are other companies who can demonstrate the technology live and among real people on the floor with awsome result. At IBC 2008 in Amesterdam, the swedish company net Insight had a live communication link over the open internet at 1.5 Gbps with their office in Sweden.

Net Insights presentation was not an artifical "show of" on the stage, but a real and functional Telepresence set.

http://digg.com/hardware/The_future_of_conferencing