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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.
You can fly 18 people to India for $899?
Cheapest tickets out there are $1200/person.
With telepresence you can get 2 rooms for $1800 and have a meeting with 36 people, or you can fly 18 of them out for $16,182 and have a bunch of cranky people that had to take 24 hour flights and deal with international travel hassles
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. <><
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.
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 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.]