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Cisco Demos Public Rooms For Telepresence
CWmike writes "Matt Hamblen reports that Cisco Systems Inc. has announced the first telepresence videoconferencing rooms available for public use. It demonstrated the technology simultaneously in four locations in India, the US and the UK Three of the four demonstration sites were retrofitted rooms in Taj Hotels in London, Bangalore, India and Boston. The luxury hotel chain will build the videoconferencing rooms for business and guest use at rates starting at $400 an hour in the Boston location. Cisco said prices will vary from $299 to $899 an hour at various locations globally, depending on the number of users. The rooms can accommodate from one to 18 people."
That's one place I don't want to see a demo!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
...so I can talk to my cats while I'm on vacation? I have a Logitech webcam and a Linux box. Thankyouforyourtime.
At those costs, it is cheaper to fly out and meet in person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KInYEpDn7bI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kd2SO1_kSA&feature=related
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns669/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd80546ccd.html
The Cisco Telepresence systems are nice, but not /that/ nice. $400 per hour seems a bit steep when you have to travel to the meeting place to begin with. Maybe for the extremely rare instance for a smallish company.
:-)
For our VTC, we use relatively cheap LifeSize systems. We've had good luck with stability and interoperability although most of our VTC is LifeSize to LifeSize. Still, at $5K for a basic system (plus display) it wouldn't take long to make that up. A fully integrated room like the Cisco system goes for ~$75K.
One more note. If you're going to do serious VTC, use Masergy.
One one more note, LifeSize just released their new systems which do 1080p30. I don't know about bandwidth, but the "old" 720p30 systems that I'm using do that with ~1100kbps. I'm assuming that the new ones will require ~4 times that for full motion.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with LifeSize, just a happy customer.
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
Isn't this just videoconferencing, which Kinko's has offered for years?
I first read this as "Cisco Demos Public Restrooms For Telepresence"
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Let's see, I've done some video of my own, using a web cam that cost me $12. (Granted, it was only 15fps, but for extreme low cost it would fit the bill and my 30fps camera set me back a whopping $175.) Now, there's some cost for an Internet connection and maybe the TV they're providing is an expensive $3,000 flat screen, but as I see it, the reason you use teleconferencing is to save money, not to spend more than it costs to go there in person.
This is like, oh, 1980s pricing when telecommunications links were extremely expensive and companies would be willing to spend money on new toys and people didn't know what the real cost of an international video connection was. Most people in business see enough video over the Internet to realize that the cost to deliver even high-quality video is not extreme. Thus they're going to realize these prices are way too high and they're not buying it.
Of course! I'm forgetting! This is the rack rate, the advertised rate a hotel claims to charge if you walk up to the desk and ask for a room that day, you get reamed up the anus for the maximum possible rate. Expect the rate claimed to be severely discounted, even for very short advance notice. No one will use it otherwise. Might work at $100 an hour or $400 a day but I seriously don't think it's going to work at $400 an hour.
Let's see, and my numbers may be wrong but let me make an estimate. I can ignore salaries because you're paying them the same whether their butt is sitting in a chair in, say, DC or in Hong Kong. Since I know some of these prices I can give an example.
Say you have to send four people to a meeting in Seoul. (I know it doesn't list there as a place but I'm presuming one will be there eventually if they want it to be successful.) KAL from DC or New York to Seoul, South Korea is around $800 each way per person. Hotel probably adds the same per day for the team. (One room for male members, one room for female ones.) Add another $400 for per diem. So for a seven-day meeting to negotiate a contract, it's going to cost $6400, plus $5600 for the rooms, plus another $5600 for feeding them, etc. That's $17,500. Add in $2200 each for their salaries plus G&A for the 4 days they're sitting on a plane not working (plane trip each way plus some time before and after to recover from jet lag), add another $2,000 for bribes and unexpected expenses (yes, I know technically bribes are illegal, but in some places you have no choice or you can't get business done at all) and it totals $27,600 for the trip and your people even got to visit South Korea during off-hours.
Now, you're sticking them in front of a video room for 6 hours a day, that's $4,800 each day (presumably you have to pay the other side's conference room cost, the use of telepresence is for your convenience, not theirs, it wouldn't cost them anything to have the meeting in person at their offices), and in a week, that's $33,600 and your people ain't even gotten a free junket out of it so there's no appreciation for the company (and no friendly competition among your people to get that juicy trip at company expense.) And some of these travel expenses might be negotiable. Plus, if you aren't in a city where their video conference rooms are, you have an expense to go there, reducing any alleged "savings" over the cost of travel.
Besides, if video conferencing was so much better, people'd be using their own computers and doing it over the Internet for a cost equivalent probably to the first one hour Cisco wants to charge. I don't know about you, but I think you can do a fairly decent videoconference over a 764K internet connection, and that's what Verizon is offering me for $19.95 a month, and their commercial DSL is 3mbps for $42.95 a month.
Let me tell you, I did a so-so videoconference with a friend, using a web cam, oh, about, ten, twelve years ago, me in Arlington, Virginia, 4 miles from Washington D.C., friend was in Colorado, audio was so so and video was
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Telepresence is a very cool technology. It is not just another video teleconference system. Anyone who has experienced it in person will be able to explain why it is not just another VTC. I visited the Cisco Office in Charlotte not too long ago and was able to experience a telepresence conference with Cisco in Research Triangle Park. It really is quite amazing. Yes, it is expensive but if you see it yourself in person you will understand why. It seems like a pretty good idea for cisco to have this system setup in hotels and other locations where it can be rented for corporations and other uses. In fact, I can see where this could be used as a solution for conferences that would normally require a lot of travel. Instead, a small or medium size company that has an office in Atlanta and another office in Denver can simply rent time in a telepresence room at a hotel in atlanta and then in denver and probably still make it a lot cheaper than flying people half way across the country esp with airline tickets and fuel costs as high as they are right now. Pretty cool stuff.
One additional note. While I was at the Cisco office in Charlotte the office staff there told me that since they installed the telepresence system, Cisco has cut out virtually all travel. They can do that simply because the telepresence experience is so good that there is not much reason to travel. Also, of course the telepresence system is quite expensive so they had to compensate for that somewhere.
Not exactly. Doesn't an orgy require a few senses other than sight and sound?
I got to attend a telepresence meeting at the beginning of the summer and color me unimpressed. Of course, I'm not very enthusiastic about any real-time technology binding a company with offices all over the world (include telephones and worse, IRC in that too).
PHBs of the sort who drove Turbolinux into the ground (trying to drive schedules in Tokyo based on California business hours) will love this though.
And yes, once you get the meeting established, the video and audio is quite good.
Disclaimer: I work for Cisco, but in a different part of the company.
Funniest post I have read in a while.
You clearly have never seen what the setup is like to use.
You should go to the movie industry and tell them they dont have to spend 30 million a film when you can do similar things with the video recorder on your mobile phone and a PC. It's about the same thing.
I had the benefit of experiencing multipoint teleconferencing. NewYork (where I was), San Jose and Boston. The room had three 60in plasmas and three cameras. Now of course you can't see everybody at once if there are three people in each room (9 feeds in total), but when the left person in Boston spoke, the left screen in New York changed to show the speaker (and the sound came from the left screen); then when the San Jose (left) guy spoke the Boston guy was replaced with that person. It was pretty slick, just like in a real room where you look at the person that is talking. There was _no lag_ with sound, such as you would ask a question and then just as if they were sitting next to you, they would respond.
The setup was trivial. When we walked into the room the cisco phone on the desk was pre-programmed for our meeting and all we had to hit was the "join meeting" button next to the LCD screen. No phone numbers to dial, PINs etc. If we wanted to share a ppt, there was a VGA cable to plug our laptop into. I understand the folks that set the meeting up just plugged in the rooms into their outlook calendar and *voila* all done.
For those comparing this to consumer grade video conferencing (yahoo/skype), it's like comparing IMAX to watching a movie on a iPhone.
One 1080p Camera [$4,800]
60" Plasma [$4,014.99]
HD encoder 9Mbps for three HDTV
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I don't work for Cisco anymore, but when I did, we used Telepresence. It's incredible. You look straight into the eyes of the folks on the other end, they're in hi def, and there is NO LAG in the speech and reactions, even when they are half way around the world. It an entirely different experience -- it really does feel like you are in the same room with them. The conversations are better, more information dense, your expressions and reactions help speed understanding, and when you're done, you almost automatically start to get up and walk over to shake the other person's hand. It's very hard to explain the experience here in text; you need to actually do it. I agree that for casual communication, phone calls or simple web cams are fine. But for business communication, joint design sessions, trying to work through complex issues, and avoiding travel, these systems are incredible. I was as skeptical as anyone before I used it; I've seen teleconferencing for 40 years and it has almost always been more trouble than it's worth. Skype and webcams have changed the low end, and Telepresence will change the high end. If you know someone at Cisco, go ask them to get you in to see one. It's damn impressive, even for cynical tech-heads. [I don't work for Cisco, don't own their stock, and don't stand to gain anything from their success -- TP just rocks.]