Telepresence Options - Main News Content Channel

Why Cisco Sweetened Its Deal For Tandberg

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:47:42 -0500

By Peter Burrows @
Business Week

Cisco has sweetened its acquisition offer for Norway-based videoconferencing company Tandberg by 11%, to $3.4 billion. That should be enough to satisfy the 90%-plus of investors who had withheld their support for the existing deal. The company says more than 40% of Tandberg shareholders, including the largest ones, have "pre-accepted the offer." More details here from Bloomberg.

I'd heard that an increase of 10% to 15% would likely get the deal done, so this improvement seems designed to accomplish two simultaneous goals: to put the acquisition over the top, without sending the message that Cisco will panic and radically pay up when shareholders of acquisition targets hold out for more. That's critical for a company as acquisitive as Cisco, which has done four large deals in just the last 45 days. At Cisco's shareholder meeting on Nov. 12, Cisco CEO John T. Chambers warned that "I'll walk" rather than overpay. "We're not going to pay a price that we don't think is good for shareholders."

One way or another, Chambers needed to get this deal done. He has said that video is his number one strategic priority, and video-conferencing in particular is a great opportunity for Cisco. Few, if any, forms of traffic chew up bandwidth and require more sophisticated routing and switching than videoconferencing--which needs to be not only high-res, but real-time.

And buying Tandberg was clearly the best way to accelerate his grand video plans. The company is not only the market leader in videoconferencing gear, but it's by far the hottest player in the market--not only with the mid-tier conference room systems that are the bulk of the industry, but also for high-end telepresence systems like the ones Cisco sells. Multiple industry sources I've spoken to say Tandberg routinely beats Cisco in deals for these systems, which create the illusion that you're actually sitting in the same room with other attendees, wherever they may be.

Also, Cisco needed to find a way to embrace open standards for its telepresence offerings. Currently, Cisco's systems only work with other Cisco systems, for the most part. That's unacceptable, for a company that built its Internet equipment empire by championing the most important open standard of them all--the Internet Protocol. Analysts say Tandberg is a leader not only in product innovation, but in making its gear inter-operate with other brands.

Here's a video of Chambers and Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen talking about the deal at the time.

[via Business Week]

The November Edition of the Telepresence Options Telegraph Newsletter

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:55:32 -0500

We have just published the November issue of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, our newsletter that covers telepresence technologies and the telepresence industry. We have moved from an HTML newsletter to a downloadable PDF which we believe makes for a more exciting and visually impactful publication. It also has greatly simplified the production of the newsletter so you can expect to see the Telegraph published on a more regular basis. You can subscribe to the Telepresence Options Telegraph Here: http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/syndication/

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TELEGRAPH AS A PDF

    * Logitech Buys LifeSize Communications for $405MM with HSL's Thoughts and Analysis

    * Entrepreneur Magazine covers Telepresence and Powwow Virtual, the HPL's Business Model for Public Telepresence

    * Cisco -TANDBERG Updates

    * David Danto - From Telepresence to the Desktop: Video Comes of Age

    * If Telepresence is the Present then 3D is the Future

    * PRESENCE 2009 Conference and Telepresence Industry Dinner in Marina Del Ray Wed. Nov 11th

    * IPeak Networks IPQ reduces Packet loss for TP and videoconferencing

    * TANDBERG launches T1 Small Group Telepresence System

    * A New Company Profile - BT Conferencing

    * A New Solution Snapshots

- Polycom TPX HD Series

    * New Telepresence Videos from HSL's YouTube Channel

    * Telepresence New Articles and Stories
    * Telepresence Industry Press Releases

    * Telepresence Industry Deals

    * Telepresence People - Case Murphy has been promoted to Principal Engineer for Collaboration Technologies at AOL, Brett McAteer, George Astacio, Aaron Payne, Joe Vitalone, Chris Otten, and Mohammed Ghafari

    * Telepresence Industry Professionals (TIP) - Marina Del Ray Dinner - Wednesday, Nov 11th, TIP over 1030+ members

Odds & Sods - RADVISION has reported revenues for Q3 2009, AT&T Telepresence Solution, Conferencing Advisors Inc. Named Partner of the Year by LifeSize Communications, Telepresence interoperability tested at Internet2 Conference, Financial Post predicting that Polycom will be next company to be
acquired after Cisco's acquisition of TANDBERG

    * Telepresence Industry Jobs - Telepresence Industry Professional Job Board,
Director of Sales, Eastern US - LifeSize Communications - New York City, Polycom is Hiring over a Dozen Engineers and Account Managers, Polycom is Hiring Major Account Managers in Amsterdam, Netherlands. And Belgium, Brussels

    * On The Bench - A Breakdown of Industry Talent in the Market for their Next Opportunity

and More!

You can subscribe to the Telepresence Options Telegraph Here: http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/syndication/

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TELEGRAPH AS A PDF

This Edition of the Telepresence Options Telegraph was Sponsored by Video and Converged Network Provider: MASERGY Communications

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Logitech Acquires LifeSize Communications for $405MM with HPL President Howard S. Lichtman's Thoughts and Analysis

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:29:36 -0500

Telepresence and videoconferencing hardware manufacturer LifeSize Communications was acquired by PC peripheral powerhouse Logitech (NASDAQ: LOGI) in an all-cash deal reported to close in December. LifeSize which has raised $78 million dollars in venture capital investment from Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Pinnacle Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners has estimated sales of $90MM for 2009. Logitech which is one of the leading manufacturers of PC peripherals including computer mice, keyboards, speakers, and most importantly and pertinently webcams had revenue of $2.37 billion in 2008 and $2.2 billion in 2009. This acquisition is their largest ever. LifeSize will continue as an on-going concern as a division of Logitech and will retain their brand, Austin headquarters, and CEO Craig Malloy.

Official LifeSize Press Release
LifeSize Announcement to Customers and Partners

Human Productivity Lab President Howard S. Lichtman's Thoughts and Analysis

I have been meaning to write about the future of desktop video and software codecs for a while ever since I got the latest from Marty Hollander at Vidyo and Bob McCandless at BrightCom over a month ago. Vidyo and BrightCom like many other players in the industry including Teliris use the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 for their desktop implementations and I and many others have seen 720p video running at 60fps using a Logitech camera and Vidyo's software based codec. GBH Communications recently deployed over 10,000 seats of Vidyo + Logitech (scaling to an eventual 100,000 seats) for a large religious organization in what is probably the largest videoconferencing deal ever. I own a Logitech 9000 myself and used it recently to record this video for those interested in what kind of quality you can achieve with "Logitech equipment".
The future of videoconferencing is the software-based codec running on general purpose (albeit high end... for now) general purpose processors connected to a low-cost, high quality HD camera via a USB 3.0 connection. The $20,000+ plastic-camera-on-the-tv-set-on-the-desert-cart dedicated videoconferencing appliance is a business model with the lifespan of an alcoholic fruit fly chain smoking unfiltered camels. The singularity approaches...

Dr. Steve McNelley, co-founder of telepresence pioneer Digital Video Enterprise believes that we are not that far off from business users bringing their own codec (laptop...ultimately probably their iPhone...) into a telepresence environment where they plug into the camera platform(s) via USB 3.0, dial from their personal phone book, and connect out over a 50MBps wireless LTE connection. Dr. McNelley believes that the value in the industry will accrue to the best telepresence environments and display technologies as cameras , codecs, and network commodifies. Dr. McNelley is understandably biased as DVE's solutions are open platforms which can accommodate a software-based codec and a next generation Logitech camera as easily as they do traditional videoconferencing endpoints today.

Could the DVE Tele-immersion Room be Powered in the Future by a Laptop & Logitech Webcam?

The LifeSize acquisition is actually Logitech's 2nd videoconferencing acquisition. The company bought prosumer desktop videoconferencing company SightSpeed for $30MM in cash a year ago (Oct 28th 2008). The acquisition gave Logitech a prosumer videoconferencing platform to bundle with its prosumer webcams. The business model is "freemium" where you could use the personal platform Logitech Vid for free but if you wanted to upgrade to the enhanced features of SightSpeed Business...

You had to pay for the enhanced features:

The major limitations of SightSpeed Business was that the videoconferencing client was/is only compatible with other SightSpeed business clients and not compatible with traditional standards-based videoconferencing and telepresence end points and enterprise video network infrastructure that is used to host multi-point calls.

Enter LifeSize Communications Stage Right
The LifeSize acquisition gives Logitech the industry's price/performance leading HD codec to bundle with its next generation HD USB 3.0 webcams that it no doubt has on the drawing board. I am assuming that the talented software engineers at LifeSize will have little problem porting over their standards-based videoconferencing client to run on the computer industry's next generation multi-core processors.

Couple that capability with Logitech's distribution muscle and all of the sudden you can purchase a fully functional standards-based HD videoconferencing end-point at every Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart in the world. Hell... Dell will even finance it for you... It comes with Logitech Vid for free, you can upgrade to SightSpeed Business if you need more features, or LifeSize if you like real horsepower and need to talk to the videoconferencing world. The new LogiSize solution will be fully compatible with a complete line of traditional videoconferencing appliances and LifeSize's telepresence offerings and I am betting that you will get the full catalog with every webcam purchased.

What does that mean for the Telepresence and Videoconferencing Industry? I am afraid that is going to have to be a consulting gig because it is 2:00AM in LA and I have been up since 5:30 AM in Washington DC and I have a conference to attend in the morning.

Congrats to Logitech, Craig Malloy, Vab Goel, Jeff Brody, and all the folks at LifeSize in Austin!

Entrepreneur Magazine Covers Telepresence and Powwow Virtual-The HPL's Business Model for Public Telepresence

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:17:50 -0500

Dan O'Shea, the former Editor-in-Chief of Telephony Magazine, Fierce Telecom editor, and guru of all things electronic did a piece this month for Entrepreneur Magazine: Doing Business with No Walls and covered telepresence and Powwow Virtual, the Human Productivity Lab's business model for a network of publicly available telepresence conferencing centers. Other commitments have forced me to keep Powwow bubbling on the back-burner but we continue to look for the right investor and/or partner that is looking for a sophisticated public telepresence strategy and the right business model, team, designs, technology roadmap, and global audience to get it off the ground fast!

Room with a View
By Dan O'Shea, Entrepreneur Magazine, November 2009

Telepresence is as close as it gets to meeting face-to-face

Have you ever tried to shake hands with a business partner sitting directly across from you, even though you know he's in his own office 2,000 miles away? Telepresence makes you want to do just that. It's no hallucinatory drug, though the sensory experience it provdes via ultra-realistic, life-size videoconferencing does make it seem as if someone spiked your java. it's like interacting with a hologram from "Minority Report."

Telepresence is souped-up videoconferencing , complete with giant high-def screens, powerful codecs, multi-aspect cameras and enriched audio speakers. The gear is offered by companies such as Polycom, Cisco Systems, Tandberg, Lifesize Communications and others. Service packages are available from the likes of AT&T and other business providers that provide videoconferencing.

While basic videoconferencing has been around for decades, it never really took off due to clunky equipment, glitchy performance, poorly synchronized video and audio. It was nothing like meeting someone in person. Telepresence is as close as it gets.
The recession makes a pretty good case for telepresence: Companies need to cut travel costs but also need to keep globalizing to reach new partners and customers.

Telepresence is not new either, and it wasn't widely adopted. "before 2005, probably less than 5,000 people had been in a telepresence room," said Howard Lichtman, founder of Human Productivity Lab, and a telepresence entrepreneur himself.
The technology is still too expensive for some small businesses. Top systems can cost as much as $ 350,000, and even stripped-down versions hover around $ 75,000 and other innovators are trying to change the economic model with a new concept: public telepresence.

Lichtman co-founded Powwow Virtual, [which is looking to] rent public telepresence rooms on an hourly basis, a model other companies have pursued and for which they charge as much as $500.00 an hour. But, with more funding, Lichtman believes Powwow Virtual, a [subsidiary] of the Human Productivity Lab, could build dozens of public telepresence centers around the world in shopping malls, hotels and similar places, and cut the cost by spreading it around the sites and telepresence rooms of different sizes within one facility. That would make telepresence affordable for almost any small business to use.

And that may inspire you to skip the long-distance handshake and go right to the high-five -D.O.

[via Entrepreneur Magazine]

HSL's Thoughts and Analysis

As I mentioned in the intro, other commitments have forced me to keep Powwow bubbling on the back-burner but we continue to look for the right investor and/or partner that is looking for a sophisticated public telepresence strategy and the right business model, team, designs, technology roadmap, and global audience to get a network of public telepresence conferencing centers off the ground fast!

Here are some of the benefits of the Powwow Virtual business model that I outlined in an article I wrote entitled: Publicly Available Telepresence Explodes!! Marriott, Starwood, Regus, Tata Taj All Deploy! when Marriott and Starwood joined the party.

Powwow Virtual - A 2006 design for a 6,000+ sq. ft. Powwow Virtual Super Center for deployment in a high-end retail environment in an international gateway city. The telepresence systems featured do not currently reflect the mix that we believe is optimal for success in 2009.

Powwow Virtual is the Human Productivity Lab's business model and technology roadmap for a global network of publicly available telepresence conferencing centers that double as showrooms/sales centers for corporate telepresence, video conferencing, and prosumer/consumer visual collaboration solutions. We are seeking $35MM to open 6-7 super centers in high-end retail/business/ mixed use locations such as Tysons Corner Galleria, Grand Central Station (Pan Am Building/200 Park Avenue) in New York, Phipps Plaza in Atlanta, or the Ferry Building in San Francisco. The 6-7 initial locations would prove the Reed's Law model I.E. that each additional location drives sales to the other locations in a virtuous cycle that grows geometrically with each additional location and then additional locations (8-50+) would be added through franchise partners or through another capital raise to open additional company-owned stores.

Each Powwow Virtual location would have multiple publicly available telepresence and videoconferencing systems from leading telepresence providers such as Cisco, Digital Video Enterprises, LifeSize, Polycom, TANDBERG, Telepresence Tech, Teliris, and Vidyo. Each super center location would feature best-of-breed telepresence environments from 1 seat to 28 seats that would be capable of communicating at the highest possible quality natively with other Powwow locations, corporate telepresence and videoconferencing systems on a variety of carrier networks, publicly available telepresence systems in Starwood, Marriott, Tata, and Regus locations globally, and the world's 5,000+ publicly available traditional videoconferencing rooms.

While the illustrative floor plan above is for a super center in an international gateway city, each featured telepresence/videoconferencing system would be its own "module" that could be deployed individually or be combined with any other module for smaller locations in mixed use office buildings, convention centers, hotels, coffee shops, etc. while sharing common branding, reservation system, information security procedures, and collaborative tools, etc.

Each Corporate solution will be completely compatible with the public telepresence network and will feature a shared directory with sophisticated reservation/meeting governance and 24x7 operator support.

We believe our business model has numerous advantages over locating publicly available telepresence in hotels:

A wider variety of systems of varying capacities and capabilities at superior price points
Better locations in the major international gateway cities with respect to consumer awareness and visibility
Overflow capacity for peak meeting times vs. onesie/twosie deployments
Ability to strongly brand the experience
Strong focus on the customer and the customer's ability to connect with the greatest number of telepresence and videoconferencing end points at the greatest possible quality vs. a single platform approach
Superior economics per site:

The ability to spread the cost of the network connection/managed service fees/labor over multiple end-points vs. 1-2 end-points
Price supported by sales of enterprise telepresence solutions
Price supported by retail sales

More food and beverage choices at better prices than world class hotels
Better visibility and brand/service awareness in each market than hotels can provide
Retail concept in the front of the house to drive traffic into the store & ability cross sell to virtual meeting participants on their way out
The ability to sell corporate telepresence solutions in a customer-focused environment which allows for a head-to-head comparison of price/performance
Human Productivity Lab Secret Sauce and Future-Proof Business Strategy

Powwow Virtual has:

A world-class technology team at arm's length
The right technology roadmap for success
The designs for the facilities and unique telepresence environments/solutions
Unique HPL pro-modifications to existing telepresence solutions
Relationships with the leading telepresence hardware vendors, telepresence managed service providers, carriers, and inter-networking providers in the world
A proven track record of success in predicting how the telepresence industry would develop and which telepresence technologies/systems would succeed
The largest audience in the world interested in telepresence

Our business model perfectly complements the publicly available telepresence efforts of AT&T, Cisco, F2F Biz Cafe, Marriott, MEETnHD, Polycom, Regus, and Tata

Powwow Virtual locations would be completely compatible with these efforts from Day 1
Powwow Virtual locations would offer overflow capacity to each of these locations and vice versa
Powwow Virtual locations would drive traffic to other publicly available telepresence networks and vice versa

Finally, we believe that Powwow offers a number of non-intuitive advantages for serious investors interested in telepresence opportunities:

International and Emerging Market Business Opportunity - Worried about the actuarially unsound US Dollar? Interested in putting some chips on the BRIC countries, Switzerland, or emerging markets? Powwow offers a unique ability to invest in these markets while maintaining your ability to manage your investment from any country in the world with a telepresence end-point.

Reduced Technology Risk - The Powwow business model has a more limited technology risk vs. other models. Powwow Virtual is the "Big Screen TV Store" of telepresence. We are pulling for everyone to be successful and are happy to help any of the vendors improve their offerings but if "Panasonic" is outselling "Magnovox" then we take out "Maganavox" and replace it with "Panasonic". If Company Y develops a new telepresence technology that revolutionizes the market then we replace what isn't selling with the latest and greatest. The customer is King at Powwow Virtual and the investment risk of betting on a failed technology is reduced.

Serious inquiries to HSL@HumanProductivityLab.com

From Telepresence to the Desktop - Video Comes Of Age (The video conference room is dead - long live video conferencing)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:56:25 -0500

A View From The Road - Special Report: A "milepost" perspective on industry activity and what it means for the future of video collaboration.

By David Danto, IMCCA Director of Emerging Technology

From Telepresence to the Desktop - Video Comes Of Age

The video conference room is dead - long live video conferencing

These are exciting times for those of us in the video collaboration industry. Cisco, one of the largest firms in the high tech world has agreed in principle to purchase Tandberg, one of the leaders in the video conferencing industry. While the deal is not completed and still has some hurdles to overcome, on a scale of one to ten this is a solid fifty in terms of the ramifications it presents to the future landscape of our industry.

In order to understand the magnitude and nuances of this approaching upheaval one first has to look back at the history of video conferencing and telepresence. The IMCCA published a comprehensive background on telepresence in the January 2008 edition of Europe's World Commerce Review which provided an in-depth perspective worthy of review. The state of the industry at that time could be summed up as follows:

·   While traditional video conferencing systems represented (and still represent) 99% of the industry, Cisco's entry into the top 1% of the market (telepresence) was a defining and disruptive moment. None of the other manufacturers or providers had the marketing budget and muscle of Cisco.

·   The legacy manufacturers adopted a "we have telepresence too" stance, very content to increase the sales of their telepresence and traditional video products to the rising tide of customers created by Cisco's marketing.

·   The very compelling message of what telepresence provides had not been challenged. There was little incentive to market against the telepresence concept - the idea that big, expensive, high-quality systems "solved the legacy problems" of past, far less expensive solutions - regardless of the inaccuracies that simplistic thinking created.

·   Telepresence systems were being marketed and sold to senior management in the C-suite, with many of the manufacturers bypassing the traditional video and multimedia experts at customer firms in favor of the executives and IT leaders (who usually weren't video product experts and didn't question the inaccurate marketing message.)

So then one might ask why Cisco would feel compelled to purchase Tandberg. The list of good business reasons is a mile long and many are outside the scope of this article. What had become clear though, even before the deal was announced, was that the telepresence marketing message was being forced to change. Cisco themselves were having an "Animal Farm" moment with their TelePresence product.

Their go to market themes in late 2007 were:

In order to maximize ROI on a video system the equipment needs to be installed in a specially designed, dedicated room expressly for the purpose of video. Utilization of that space would be able to achieve numbers in the 80% to 95% range, justifying the increased spending in equipment, bandwidth and facilities. Life-size images are an absolute requirement. Interoperability with legacy video conference gear would ruin the TelePresence experience.

Their new themes in mid 2009 - even before the Cisco-Tandberg deal was announced - were as follows:

Target utilization levels beyond 50% to 60% percent result in end-user frustration due to an inability to reserve a first choice room and/or time.   There is significant value in lesser priced systems being installed in multipurpose rooms - allowing more people to have access to the video tools (and resulting in even lower utilization). Life-size images are really nice but can be somewhat sacrificed on one end of a call in order to bring video to more users. Interoperability with legacy video conference gear is an absolute requirement.

The message had changed significantly. Everything the legacy video and multimedia professional had said about the emerging telepresence space was shown to be true. This tremendous push into the upper 1% of the market garnered the majority of attention but did not significantly change the reality of video systems as they relate to Metcalfe's law - one has to extend the reach of the video systems to many users - more than the telepresence paradigm allows for - in order for the technology to be widely adopted. While many manufacturers did call their single screen systems telepresence whether or not it was true, the reality was that as these screens continued to get smaller and reach wider deployment, "it really wasn't telepresence any more" (just as we said back in January 2008). For all practical purposes, the term telepresence while having a clear definition in its purest state has really just become a more politically correct method of saying video conferencing.

What will the industry look like going forward?

The coming upheaval will have many effects on the current manufacturers, only some of which can we even attempt to predict.

Cisco and Tandberg have put themselves on an interesting path. The combination has already attracted some creative nicknames from our industry, beginning with the obvious "Cisberg" and including my favorite, the Monty Python homage "Norwegian Blue."   There is tremendous speculation about how this newly combined firm would operate. The Cisco TelePresence related business units are a marketing driven operation, very committed to image, message and executive perception. It is not news that engineering prowess and product reliability were not the most important missions in the TelePresence unit there. In contrast, the team at Tandberg always had product engineering and reliability as mission one. On the equipment side one can surely expect a merging / hybrid strategy for a brief period of time. However, in the long run, the better designed products will win out. (If you need to take a car ride, would you choose to take your Lexus or your Pinto?)   One has to assume that the superior C60 and C90 codecs from Tandberg will eventually be the engines for Cisco TelePresence. More than just better, these engines will allow Cisco to adopt a strategy that allows interoperability from the telepresence room to the desktop and everywhere in between. Cisco will now be equipped with a broad range of video products for every use case. Just think of how the personal video appliances will explode when promoted with Cisco's marketing might. In addition, it doesn't take a psychic to realize that with a few tweaks Tandberg's industry leading management platform, TMS, will be the TelePresence management platform Cisco has needed for a long time.

On the operational side, it has already been announced that Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen will take over control of Cisco's TelePresence team upon completion of the deal. Fredrik and his management team will likely represent a complete change of direction for Cisco's video group, moving it much further toward an open philosophy that will listen to customers and respond with dialog and solutions. (In fairness to the existing Cisco team, there was only so much responsiveness they could provide while locked into the CTS platforms as their only product. As an example, take a peek at one of Cisco's own compatibility matrix websites, showing just how many of their own TelePresence products and firmware versions don't work amongst themselves.)

For the rest of the firms in the industry, the picture isn't as clear. Much has been said about Polycom in the wake of the announcement. They are now clearly positioning themselves as the only choice for a Cisco independent, open platform video solution. The latest industry research showed them actually retaking the lead in global video system sales by a small margin for the first time in years. Andy Miller (ex. Cisco, Tandberg and IPC) has recently joined their executive team as the head of "global field operations" with a clear mandate to help move them into a market leadership position. Polycom may wind up strengthening their relationships with the independent, "Cisco-hating" firms of the world, or they might be the next buy-out target of another large IT vendor, further consolidating the industry. If that happens one has to wonder how long the remaining independent video manufacturers will be able to survive on their own. Video collaboration is changing from a product industry to a solution industry - and to a lesser extent from a hardware to a software industry. Stand-alone hardware manufacturers are surely on the endangered list.

Radvision is in uniquely difficult circumstances. Cisco has been utilizing their products - specifically the innovative Scopia Bridge - as their gateway MCU for TelePresence to connect to standards based video products. If the Cisco-Tandberg deal is consummated Cisco will surely switch to using the Tandberg owned Codian bridges coming along with the deal. It's hard to imagine how Radvision will replace their largest customer.

Two clear categories of winners in the new video world will be managed service providers and B2B connection / exchange providers. If you haven't noticed everybody and their grandmothers are getting into the services and connectivity businesses. There are two big reasons for this. Firstly, the paranoia of IT risk and security teams has finally defeated any hopes of a simple, universal border control / firewall traversal solution for IP video. Regardless of the fact that there is an industry standard and highly effective method of enabling secure external video for any enterprise (that Tandberg helped in fact create) this standard has not been widely adopted. Tandberg was not an IT vendor, and as an outsider they rarely gained the approvals required to place this technology at an enterprise's secured doorstep. The other reason for the explosion of these businesses is simple - money. Many firms have discovered that selling these B2B connection services (and to a lesser extent services to manage all a firm's endpoints) is a wildly lucrative business. Customers will pay barrels full of cash to buy secure connections on private exchanges and the related services (even though they could have achieved them for free if they made their paranoid security groups back down.)   Look for a continued explosion of offerings in this area.

What will video collaboration look like going forward?

When the Cisco-Tandberg deal is completed and their expanded product catalog offers much more than just rigid telepresence systems we will finally start to see a correction in the over-hyping of telepresence. At this point the video collaboration industry will have been forever changed. The idea of a "video conference room" - meaning a place you have to go to to engage in visual collaboration - will go away, just as the phone booth did when you no longer needed to go somewhere special just to participate in a voice call.

Three paradigms for video will survive: Desktop Video, Telepresence and the Video Equipped Meeting Room.

Corporate executives have certainly embraced telepresence as an excellent system for visual collaboration - in comparison to their legacy equipment. However, no executives are going to prefer going to a shared room they have to wait in line to reserve when they can make a telepresence quality call from a personal 24" screen on their desk. The Cisco-Tandberg deal clearly means that desktop video is about to break-out in a huge manner, far displacing telepresence as the industry darling. Some reasons for this are:

The desktop appliance is far less expensive than the telepresence room

It requires no sunk costs - no "construction dependencies" to activate or utilize

It can be installed, removed and relocated with no loss of investment

Widespread use of them will require a heck of a lot more bandwidth and connectivity within the enterprise (a reality that makes Cisco's network infrastructure people happy I'm sure)

It is personal - requiring no reservation and always available - matching the long sought after promise of "video dial tone"

At the same time, other unified communications vendors are pushing the concept of "free desktop video" through an enterprise's PCs. Microsoft OCS as an example offers "click to connect" escalation of IM sessions to voice and video calls - even HD quality video calls with the right camera. Soon a lot of people will be adopting the desktop video paradigm in a big way, making the need to go somewhere to have a video call a thing of the past.

People will still utilize truly immersive telepresence rooms, but only when they are appropriate - when two groups of people need to meet in face-to-face meetings for extended periods of time. Regardless of what the manufacturers call it, the "one screen telepresence room" will fade away.

This leaves the third paradigm, the meeting room. As stated above you'll no longer go to a conference room just to make a video call. However, if you have a real need for an in person team meeting, and one or more of the required participants can't be in the place where the meeting is being held, video will be available in appropriately equipped rooms to be utilized in much the same manner that the speakerphone on the conference table is today - as a tool to allow this remote site to join. This evolution of conference room video will also bring richer collaboration tools, so teams can share and interact with data and content.

With these three models - Desktop Video, Telepresence and the Video Equipped Meeting Room - we will see the end of the video conference room as we knew it, but at the same time we will see the widespread adoption and continued growth of video throughout our culture and businesses.

Death to the video conference room - long live video conferencing!

------------------------------------

A View From The Road is written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has spent 31 years in the audio visual and broadcasting industries. He has designed facilities for firms such as AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU and Lehman Brothers. He has recently joined JPMorgan Chase & Company and is the IMCCA's Director of Emerging Technology. Email David at David.Danto.IMCCA@Danto.com

About the IMCCA

The Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and users. Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various interactive and collaborative communications technologies in their professional and everyday lives.

For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive Director, at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org. Visit the IMCCA web site at www.imcca.org

PRESENCE 2009 Conference - Update Nov 11th-13th Los Angeles

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:06:36 -0500

PRESENCE 2009 is right around the corner and it looks to be a particularly rich and rewarding conference. In addition to a diverse group of interesting paper presentations, we'll have several demonstrations of telepresence technologies including telepresence conferencing systems from BrightCom and Digital Video Enterprises, true knowledge-building discussion sessions, various social events, and three outstanding keynote speakers:

Barbara Hayes-Roth, an internationally recognized expert in intelligent agents and interactive
characters. She is the former Director of the Adaptive Agents Project and the Virtual Theater Project at Stanford University. She is the founder and President of Extempo Systems which is developing life-like coach-bots to provide personalized one-to-one coaching.

Howard S. Lichtman, founder and President of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent research consultancy that advises organizations looking to invest in telepresence technologies. Mr. Lichtman is the Publisher of Telepresence Options and the editor of the Telepresence Telegraph, the most widely read newsletter following telepresence conferencing, the author of numerous papers and publications on telepresence and telepresence conferencing, and his writings and analysis have been featured in over a dozen national and international publications.

Albert "Skip" Rizzo, Research Scientist and Research Professor at the Institute for Creative
Technologies and Department of Psychiatry/School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Rizzo is the Co-Director of the VRPSYCH Lab at USC which conducts research on the design, development, and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems for clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation.

The full schedule and all the conference details are on the conference website, http://ispr.info/conference.

Telepresence Conferencing Demonstrations include:

The Digital Video Enterprises Telepresence Podium and the BrightCom Lumina L37

PRESENCE 2009 / Telepresence Industry Professionals Dinner - Wednesday, Nov 11th 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM - Marina Del Ray, CA

Academia meets industry at a dinner for PRESENCE 2009 researchers interested in telepresence technologies and Telepresence Industry Professionals. The dinner is open to academics, researchers, and members of the telepresence, videoconferencing, and visual collaboration industries interested in the next generation of telepresence technologies.

Details:

Wednesday Evening, 6:30 PM
Dress: Casual
Economics: Dutch Treat
Hosts: Howard S. Lichtman, Publisher - Telepresence Options
Matthew Lombard, President - International Society of Presence Research

Tony P's Dockside Grill
4445 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA
(310) 823-4534
http://www.tonyps.com

Directions Via Google Maps

BT Conferencing Company Profile

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:21:53 -0500

We continue our series profiling the leading firms in the telepresence industry with a profile on telepresence and videoconferencing exchange provider Telx. You can browse our Company Profile archive for previous companies profiled including Teliris, Cisco, Polycom, Glowpoint, TelePresence Tech and others. You can subscribe via RSS or e-mail to receive Company Profiles of other leading telepresence firms as they are published. All the Company Profiles will be published in the upcoming hard copy Telepresence Options 2009 Yearbook which you can receive for free by subscribing here.

BT Conferencing provides exchange service, telepresence managed services, and deployment services. These services include well regarded concierge services, reservation services, network operations services. The most important component of its offer is the video operating system "Onward" which includes capabilities for automatic session launch and operator assist, tools for measuring and reporting operational status of facilities, network devices and proactive responses to faults or alarms in progress. The company has a well architected initiative for internal marketing and user education to stimulate service awareness and session demand.

Included are comprehensive tools for monitoring demand, scheduling and operational satisfaction. With a Video Operations Center in both the USA and UK, BT Conferencing launches more than 60,000 telepresence and video conferencing calls per year

If Telepresence is the Present, 3DPresence is the Future

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:18:09 -0500

By Sagee Ben-Zedeff, Video Over Enterprise

I've been writing about innovation here for a long time. Last week I discussed (more so - complained about) the lack of innovation in the video conferencing experience in the past few years. Well, in this post I will be much more optimistic, and tell you a bit about the state-of-the-art in video conferencing innovation, a project that RADVISION is proud to take part in: 3DPresence.

Einat Yellin, who leads the 3DPresence development effort in RADVISION, was more than happy to share with me the ins and outs of the project.
Telepresence? Try 3DPresence!

I've already discussed here the long-time problem of the "camera-on-top-of-a-TV-set" video conferencing systems, which failed to provide a viable alternative to physical travel. They were replaced by high-end solutions, such as Telepresence, which partially removed some of the shortcomings.

Still, even in the most sophisticated and expensive systems some problems remain unsolved: systems are expensive, systems are not easily scaled, but most of all - experience as they may be - they do not really provide a 3D life-sized representation of the remote party, and eye contact and gesture-based interactions are met in a very limited way. The current state-of-the-art is impressive, but still fails to provide a "natural" impression of the remote conference participants. This is exactly what the 3DPresence projects aims to achieve.

The 3DPresence project was initiated by a consortium of five high-quality partners, bringing together a well-balanced and diverse mixture of industries, research and higher education institutes. The project is part of the Seventh Research Framework Programme of the European Union (FP7).

3DPresence In a Nut-Shell

What 3DPresence proposes is a multi-party, high-end 3D videoconferencing system, that will be able to transmit the feeling of physical presence in real-time to multiple remote locations in a transparent, natural way. This involves accurate representation of physical presence cues, such as multiple user (auto) stereopsis, multi-party eye contact and multi-party gesture-based interaction.

In order to provide the experience of "presence", one of the project goals was to find out what does it really mean to "be there". One of the key elements found was that the physical (geometrical) properties of the rest of the participants should remain as true as possible. This requires 3D representation.

The evolution (some may say - revolution) from 2D to 3D communication is one of the key components of a true tele-presence system, but it is not enough. Keeping eye contact and reproducing the correct gesture perspectives are both crucial for maintaining the non-verbal portion of inter-personal communication.

Even though the 3DPresence project is a research project, it has down-to-earth objectives. The main objective was that the system should be set in a conference room with geometrical restraints. The result, however, is quite different than what you would expect (and learned to know):

3DPresence Multi-Party Video Conferencing Concept

As shown in the figure above, the system consists of 4 displays for each "end point" (2 per external site). The system will allow up to two participants per "end point" and up to 3 "end points" in a conference.

Left: the "virtual" setup of 3 parties (6 participants).
Right: the "physical" setup with 2 local participants and 4 displays

The unique set-up allows maintaining eye contact and gesture awareness, as the displays render two different views of the same remote user per display.

Multi-view and Multi-display

As you may have guessed, all of the above requires unique "features" on the display side. The display for the 3DPresence system, built by Philips, one of the consortium members, is key for the project. Without boring you with too many details, the display is "multi-perspective", which allows it to display different "views" simultaneously to different viewers, depending on their viewing angle. In more technical terms, it is using a set of optical lenses that direct different pixels of the monitor to different viewing angles.

While this is very impressive (just think about yourself watching your favorite soap, while your wife is watching the big Baseball game at the same time using the same screen...), the big challenge when using this technology for video conferencing is to allow participants to move freely in front of the screen, while preserving good picture quality (not switching views too often, refraining from cross-talk of views).The images above, taken from a Philips demo clip, show how 2 perspectives can be viewed on the same screen at the same time: on the left a "left" participant feels he is being "watched", while the "right" participant on the right feels the girl is looking away:

Fiction or Reality?

Live demo of a 3DPresence conference, as captured last week in Berlin

The 3DPresence project may look like science fiction, but it is more of a reality than you may think. RADVISION already hosts a 3DPresence room fully capable of supporting this technology, and last week, in a 3D workshop hosted by HHI Fraunhofer in Berlin, a live demo was presented, connecting the 1st ever 3DPresence conference.

The project will end in Mid 2010. Until then, it will focus on enhancing quality and efficiency of the different algorithms involved, while working on interoperability with existing "legacy" systems (2D).

Although this sounds just around the corner, Einat clearly mentions that all the technologies involved - 3D video acquisition, display, coding and transmission - are still relatively new, and there's a long way to go from prototype, impressive as it may be, to a commercial product.

Still, this innovation may lead the way to an as-close-to-real-life-as-possible video conferencing experience, which may offer a real alternative to in-person meetings without any drawbacks. When thinking about where our industry can, and should, go, I would really bet my chips on Einat and the 3DPresence project.

[via blog.radvision.com]

TANDBERG Launches new T1 Small Group Telepresence System

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:07:39 -0500

The TANDBERG T1 Small Group Telepresence System

This week TANDBERG launched an updated version of the TANDBERG T1 small group telepresence system. The system has two primary seats and is designed to inter-operate with the TANDBERG T3 group system. The new T1 has the same innovative touchscreen interface as the T3 that allows participants to launch ad-hoc calls, bring in additional site, change screen layouts, and perform other conference control functions. You can read TANDBERG's official press release on the T1 Here.

The new and improved T1 is designed for executives working at satellite offices and requires about 50% of the space of a TANDBERG T3. Pricing is $139,000 for the base model which includes the camera, screen, table, and touch screen interface. The environmental buildout including acoustical wall treatments and nordic blue background adds $36,000. Options include two leather chairs $7,000 and a ceiling mounted document camera for $15,900. The T1 uses the same C90 codec engine as the T3, is capable of 1080p high resolution video, and requires 5.5MBps of bandwidth if operating at the highest possible video quality. TANDBERG has started taking orders for deliveries and general availability in Q1 2010.

The view connected to another TANDBERG T1 and two TANDBERG T3 Systems

Cisco HealthPresence Update with Video Showing Cisco's Vision

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:37:30 -0500

From the Telepresence and Videoconferencing Insight Newsletter

An update on Cisco's HealthPresence initiative in Argentina with Telepresence Options Publisher Howard Lichtman's thoughts on telepresence in healthcare and the potential for choice it could bring.

5 October 2009. The second phase of a Telemedicine pilot project, led by the Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan Pediatric Hospital, Cisco and Telefónica, in cooperation with Castro Rendón Hospital has started. This multiphase project is geared to offering remote health care support and services in different provinces of the Argentine Republic.

This initiative is part of the Garrahan Hospital's Telemedecine Reference and Counter-reference Program, which has been taking place for more than 12 years in partnership with the Garrahan Foundation. The program is managed by the Communications at a Distance Office, which delivers remote support for diagnosis via e-mail, fax and telephone to more than 70 hospitals in Argentina.

The telemedecine pilot, enabled by Cisco® collaborative technologies such as Cisco TelePresence (tm) and Cisco Unified Communications, will enhance doctor-patient interactions over a distance; support diagnoses in complex cases in remote and budget-constrained hospitals; optimize the hospital's resources; and underpin a more collaborative process in terms of procedures, prevention programs and medical treatment, all within a highly secure and effective environment.

The Telemedicine pilot project, based on the concept of Connected Health by the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), promises to be an innovative way of optimizing and elevating the Telemedicine experience for health professionals and patients in Argentina and the rest of Latin America.

The Telemedecine pilot project with Cisco includes three phases: The first phase within the Garrahan Hospital was designed to test the Cisco TelePresence technology and provide training to doctors. The second phase involves connecting the Garrahan Hospital and Castro Rendón Hospital, located about 1,400 kilometers away in the Neuquen province in the Argentinean Patagonia, through Telefonica's network. The last phase will provide coverage to the main medical centers that participate in the Communications at a Distance program of Garrahan Hospital, including the most southern area of the country.

Telefónica is providing connectivity through its national network for the Garrahan Hospital and Castro Rendón Hospital in Nequén.

The program is focused on two main goals: One is that patients from any part of the country will be able to obtain excellent medical care with the possibility of having consultations and appropriate referrals. And the second is guaranteeing access to medical care from the place of residency, in order to be able to continue with control and necessary follow-ups to receive the specialized care for pathologies that require immediate or short-term treatment.

"Prof. Dr. Juan P. Garrahan" S.A.M.I.C. Pediatric Hospital is a high- complexity public hospital which provides medical care to newborns, children and adolescents between the ages of 0 and 15 years. Due to its characteristics, the level of training of its personnel and its equipment, it is considered to be a national reference center for the diagnosis and treatment of the most complex childhood pathologies. Medical care is free for patients and the Hospital receives its budget from public funding provided by the National Government and the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, and from invoicing for services for charitable work and private medical care.

HSL's Thoughts and Analysis

"Everything great and intelligent is in the minority" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is one of the most exciting potential areas for telepresence. Most folks are stuck with whatever allopathic AMA monopoly medical practitioner is closest to them that their insurance accepts and many AMA doctors are simply salesmen for the pharmaceutical industry pushing dangerous vaccines and addictive drugs on an unsuspecting public. I am a fan of natural healing, naturopathic medicine, and the orthomolecular school of medicine which posit that the key to heath is returning the body to biochemical stasis (removing refined sugar, white flour, unnecessary pharmaceuticals, dangerous vaccines, caffeine, and anything else that would interfere with the body's natural immune system and inhibit optimum health). The problem is that holistic, orthomolecular natural healers are few and far between. If telepresence in healthcare opens up choice among physicians in a wide number of disciplines then I see the potential for much good. If telepresence in healthcare limits the options to a handful of AMA allopathic monopoly medical practitioners then that would be bad. I would hope Cisco would push to see that widest array of medical alternatives is supported so that the reputation of telepresence in health care isn't tarnished right off the bat.