Telepresence Options - Industry News

Cisco's TelePresence Translation Will Have to Wait

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:31:48 -0500

Cisco said it would offer real-time translation of TelePresence meetings last year but now concedes it's harder than expected.

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

Real-time translation of Cisco Systems TelePresence virtual meetings, which a company executive said late last year would arrive in 2009, has proved much more difficult than the company expected.

The technology, which would combine speech recognition, a translation engine and text-to-speech conversion, was demonstrated at Cisco's C-Scape conference last December. Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of the company's Emerging Technologies Group, said Cisco expected the product to go on sale in the second half of this year with an initial set of 20 languages. Both Asian and Western languages would be included in that set, and users would have the option of viewing subtitles instead of hearing a digital voice, he said.

But at Cisco's big collaboration launch on Monday, where it unveiled 61 new products and features due over the next several months, the TelePresence translation system was nowhere to be found.

In fact, Cisco doesn't even have an estimate for when it will be available for any language, said Charles Stucki, vice president and general manager of the TelePresence Systems Business Unit, in an interview Tuesday. It turns out, Stucki said, that getting accurate translations was harder than Cisco's developers had expected. While they have had good results transcribing speech to text and rendering text as synthesized speech, automatically translating the written words has run into some hurdles.

"We haven't yet completed the engineering around exactly how we're going to implement the text-to-text translation," Stucki said. "The accuracy is not high enough that it's not a frustration for people."

To solve that problem, Cisco would have had to achieve a goal that has eluded some of the best minds in computing, according to Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus Research. In fact, the investment required would be probably too great for the company to ever earn back by selling a product, he said.

"There's every reason to believe that government projects are pretty far along in certain selected languages ... but it's going to be a while before there would be an economically viable 20-language simultaneous translation component to TelePresence," Miller said.

He predicted a fully automated, real-time system wouldn't come for at least three years, and maybe never.

"There's some human interaction to make it accurate. I think that's always going to be true," Miller said. "Any (translation) application anyone develops, there's got to be some kind of review cycle."

But analysts applauded the progress Cisco has made in transcribing speech to text in English. Cisco's Media Experience Engine (MXE) 3500 and 5600, announced Monday and coming in the first half of next year, will be able to convert speech to text nearly in real time when users record videos with the Cisco Show and Share application. Show and Share, also announced Monday, is a system for enterprise employees to create video messages for their co-workers.

The speech-to-text technology only works in English today, and Cisco's Stucki said it's not intended to form the definitive document of a video or meeting. Instead, it's designed for searching the content for topics of interest and going to that specific section of the video, to save time. The capability is part of a broader initiative by Cisco to make all of an enterprise's content searchable for key subjects, which will also make it possible to organize all types of documents and communications by topic.

"That'll have an impact on productivity and forming of groups to work on projects ... in ways that wouldn't have happened before," Opus's Miller said.

In trying to make all information in an organization available to everyone who needs it, immediately, Cisco may have simply taken on a bigger challenge than it could readily handle, analysts said.

"On this, I would give them a break. It's very tough to do," said Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.

Meanwhile, Cisco may not lose too much face for not delivering on such a futuristic vision, according to Abner Germanow, an analyst at IDC.

"I don't know that there are many people who are really waiting for it," Germanow said.

[via PC World]

Video spurs explosion of Internet traffic

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:34:26 -0500

Internet traffic will have increased six fold by 2012 in a five-year period as more users view and post videos online, delegates at an Internet forum heard on Wednesday.

From 2007 to 2012, "traffic will increase sixfold," Robert Pepper, a vice president of Cisco, told the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"It's growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent and this is being driven by video," he said. "Video is the driver. Make no question about that."

Video overcomes barriers of language, local content and literacy, he said, allowing users to interact more easily with the Internet.

Pepper was addressing the IGF's fourth and final day at a "Preparing the Young Generations in the Digital Age: A Shared Responsibility" session, with Egypt's First Lady Suzanne Mubarak among those attending.

The Sharm el-Sheikh forum brought together more than 1,500 representatives of government, civil society, advocacy groups and the private sector from over 100 countries to discuss the future of the Internet.

[via Breitbart]

Big TMCs Tool Up For Telepresence

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:06:30 -0500

by Jay Campbell

12 November 2009 - Supplementing virtual meetings services that include pretrip assessments of travel versus virtual options and bookings for corporations' internal telepresence systems, American Express Business Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel have partnered with Tata Communications to help clients make bookings in Tata's expanding network of public Cisco TelePresence suites.

"With two of the largest TMCs in the world announcing they are engaging telepresence technology as a solution for customers, it reinforces the view that this technology is a serious meeting alternative to face to face," noted Paul Tilstone, executive director of the British and Irish Institute of Travel and Meetings.

CWT--which last week announced it would "help in determining if and when a virtual meeting meets" customer business needs, manage the reservations process and provide "reporting on adoption and related cost savings"--is looking forward to learning "exactly how strong the uptake will be," said Eric Bausman, global product manager for corporate card and emerging products.

In addition to Tata (which currently runs 10 public Cisco rooms, and plans to expand with 15 new rooms by year-end 2009 and another 10 by mid-2010), American Express Business Travel has a deal with Cisco TelePresence distributor Regus, an executive suite and office space provider. Amex recently concluded a pilot program with one large client in which it offered a dedicated desk taking TelePresence room reservations by phone. Amex now is offering that service to other clients and expects next year to integrate with online booking tools to bring TelePresence arrangements directly to travelers, according to officials.

While any clients using Amex's services to manage inventory for their own telepresence systems would pay Amex for that, a representative said, "I don't know that there's a single answer" to whether clients using the Tata public services would pay Tata directly and separately pay any handling fee to Amex, or if Amex would bundle the solution. CWT for now is planning to charge in similar ways as it does for traditional travel or meetings services. "The price for the room rental is in some way like a hotel room or conference facility," said Bausman. "We facilitate the booking and take a fee for that, and payment of the room services would be either through us with a credit card or the participants could settle" with the supplier. "There is no volume discount" from CWT, he said.

"There are a couple ways it can work," Bausman added. "Initially, it's like any other kind of inventory. We see it as a new form of content, so in that regard, we might see it more as an a la carte booking: 'I need a reservation for a TelePresence facility, and while I'm there I might spend a night at the hotel.' In the future, if there is a lot of interest and clients need a lot of time, we might be able to be an intermediary in terms of being able to book a block of space."

The broader "virtual meetings space today is really the Wild, Wild West," said Bruce Morgan, marketing and business development senior vice president at BCD Meetings & Incentives, which studied virtual options for more than a year. "Frankly, we find ourselves handling consulting on these events as much as we do implementing. If we've talked to 100 customers on this, we're consulting 80 percent of the time; implementing 20 percent of the time. Telepresence is typically a direct buy, where our customers say, 'We're going to invest in telepresence; we want you now to embrace telepresence and push it out.' We're not finding clients coming to us to say, 'Can you help us facilitate telepresence?' "
According to a September 2009 survey by Sabre, whose GetThere unit this year announced plans for several similar and related services planned for its self-booking tools, 42 percent of 222 travel professionals polled said their organizations "own/lease and currently use ... broadband collaboration/virtual meetings technology (e.g., TelePresence, Tandberg and Halo)." [Cisco recently announced its planned acquisition of Tandberg; the Halo solution is provided by Hewlett-Packard]. More than one-third of respondents said their firms had "no plans to invest in broadband collaboration/virtual meetings technology," while more than 20 percent said they were actively investigating or planning to purchase or lease the services. Just 8 percent of surveyed professionals from large firms said they had no systems and no plans to use them.

"We've been solicited by all the telepresence facilities very interested in having placement with us and having us facilitate introductions," BCD's Morgan added. "But in most of the telepresence we're involved with today, our clients have made an investment, and our job is to help usage and maximization of that investment." Morgan said he knows this is a different approach to some of his competitors.

"There might be some opportunity for us to help [clients] with reserving their own internal rooms," said CWT's Bausman. "They would have to open up the access to see the availability. For such clients, the need might be greater to optimize utilization. Some have done a great communication campaign resulting in great uptake; for others, the rooms aren't being used."

While the initial phases of such services are based on phone calls to dedicated agents, Amex is planning and CWT is considering integrating them into online booking systems next year, depending on client system capabilities and services from such suppliers as Tata.

Tata offers an "online portal where our customers can book any room on our public Cisco TelePresence Suites network, in real-time, 24x7," according to a Tata press representative. "This portal is also used by our private-room customers to book meetings in any of their rooms on our network as well as the public rooms. Our partners--be they the hotels or telecom providers--have an interlock process with us, where they either pass the request to our concierge staff or designate administrators in their organizations who have direct access to the portal to make the reservations themselves. This depends on the partners' preferences; we offer them the flexibility of choice."

"Our plan is to integrate across all online booking tools," said Amex vice president for marketing services and corporate affairs Alicia Tillman, using a "hub" that feeds "whatever point-of-sale tools our customers want. It will be available for agents, as well."

Demand Management

For the moment, Amex's dedicated agents are tasked with incorporating information about trip purpose, length of trip and carbon impact to come up with recommendations about virtual versus physical options.

"In our demand-management offering, we have some discussions with clients and there are some engagements to help clients understand the best way to travel--how to travel smarter," said Bausman. "We're helping them with policy compliance," and planned reporting components would offer data on "utilization, cost savings and trending on ticket prices and hotel room rates in their cities, along with incorporating telepresence room rates. Eventually, we can see an expansion of the capability in terms of 'Would you really have traveled, or is it replacing a conference call or a WebEx, etc.?' "

Other remote conferencing solutions that are less sophisticated, less costly and possibly more appropriate for other sorts of events also merit consideration. Such solutions may be better tailored to big meetings or those that include more one-way communication, and there are different approaches from travel management providers here, as well. "Clients have been doing conference calls and WebEx for some time," said Bausman. "Clients who had installed them gave us insight on how they were using them to bring people together without the costs of traveling. We have investigated some WebEx arrangements, but we haven't done anything yet globally. We do have some local agreements, but clients tell us they know how to book a conference call and do a WebEx." BCD M&I, on the other hand, has forged "key supplier relationships with suppliers who specialize in key segments of the space. For example, one is a leader in Web conferencing; another a leader in virtual world experience," said Morgan.

But there's no mistaking that telepresence is the sexiest of the virtual options.
"This technology is at a level that it has never been before in terms of clarity and crispness," said American Express Business Travel senior vice president and general manager for worldwide sales Andrew McGraw this summer of the telepresence options from Cisco and HP. "There's a direct correlation between business travel on a macro-level and increasing revenues--but there are some areas of travel that can be scaled back and supplemented with telepresence solutions, particularly internal meetings. If you remember some of the old telepresence technology, it was kind of grainy, choppy and you would over-speak one another. The reason this technology never took off for business travel--or in general, I think--is that it never was at a point that customers were comfortable with it." He said the latest generation of "this technology is as if you were sitting in the same room together. It is that clear, it is that crisp, there's a facility to sync power points, the interaction is real-time and it is absolute virtual reality."
Nevertheless, some debate continues about just how effective travel alternatives are, relative to different kinds of travel and meetings.

Participants in a virtual meetings session during the National Business Travel Association conference this summer were "pretty protective of the traditional travel space. A number of people stood up and said, 'We understand that face to face is good, and we want to make sure that it continues to happen,' " Morgan said. "But the reality is, our clients are saying that they can accomplish their business objectives without meeting face to face. If they can, we need to be able to enable that. From a solutions perspective, we have about a half-dozen solutions in play right now with different customers [in which] we're bringing virtual meetings, events and managing those."

"Whilst travel will still be required, undoubtedly, it is the extent to which this technology will pervade every day meetings use and the implications for the long-term business travel sector that is of interest to ITM," ITM's Tilstone said. "It is an area we plan to explore in more detail in 2010 through a considerable research project, entitled All Our Futures, and a series of global buyer debates--themselves held using telepresence technology."
"Virtual will never replace face-to-face interaction for building stronger relationships and changing behavior, but it can be very valuable in extending and supplementing experiences," said Carlson Marketing engagement and events president Fay Beauchine. A Carlson official suggested the potential benefit in hybrid solutions, in which, say, 300 people gather live in a meeting room, but "1,000 could benefit" if they were to participate via virtual technology.

Smaller-scale telepresence events also enable business travel flexibility, said CWT's Bausman. "We can see a case where a company has a room in their New York location. They need to connect with their Los Angeles location, but don't have a room there. They could connect [at a public facility] and have their meeting, and at the same time there might be other participants who fly to New York from Cincinnati or wherever, which could be cheaper than booking another room," he said.

~ Mary Ann McNulty contributed to this article

[via The Transnational]

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

MASERGY Communications has redefined enterprise wide-area networking by delivering innovative products, advanced capabilities and a superior customer experience, all on an integrated global IP/MPLS network. Our WAN services and advanced networking capabilities deliver a superior customer experience while our VPN options, including VPLS and Private IP, support seamless network convergence for superior voice and video performance. MASERGY provides flawless performance for Telepresence, high definition or standard video communications to any customer location.

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Cisco Collaboration Vision: New Launch Enhances Market Position

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:18:29 -0500

By Allan Sulkin, No Jitter

Cisco Systems earlier today announced numerous product offers and solutions in support of its collaboration vision that span across several functional areas:

* Conferencing
* Customer care
* Enterprise social software
* IP communications
* Messaging
* Mobile applications
* Telepresence

The following diagram illustrates the Cisco Collaboration Architecture concept, including the foundation on which the above communication application functions reside:

Many of the launch offerings were designed and developed to enhance pre-existing Cisco Collaboration Solutions, such as Unified Communications Manager (UCM) and WebEx, but a few take the company in new directions, such as hosted email and enterprise social networking.

Elements of Cisco Collaboration Strategy

Before discussing details of the launch it may be beneficial to provide a framework to better evaluate the role each new product/service brings to the Cisco Collaborations Solution portfolio. Cisco has identified five key elements for its collaboration strategy:

1. The belief that collaboration is moving from text and document-centric, to communications and people centric. Central to this belief is the role of video as a transformative element that will become as easy to use as documents are today in terms of creation, publishing, and repurpose. Cisco also believes that the current IP communications network is not sufficient to support the video needs of tomorrow.

2. Cisco Medianet, an intelligent network optimized for rich media, will enable the pervasive and scalable use of video.

3. Medianet will enable a more personal, interactive and social experience by making the technology media aware, endpoint aware and network aware.

4. The network will be used to format video and all media to best match the characteristics and the limitations of a user's specific situation.

5. Medianet goes beyond quality of service to focus on quality of experience

Cisco announced its "medianet" strategy and concept late last year. It included a new suite of technologies designed for advanced communications, collaboration and entertainment through video and rich media-optimized service provider, business and home networks. The need for a medianet is driven by Cisco's belief that video and rich media will represent 90% of total network traffic. Several of today's announcements are highly or partially focused on video, including new IP phone, telepresence, and social networking offers. Cisco's recent Tandberg acquisition announcement further underscored the company's evolving strategic focus on a communications medium that demands higher bandwidth and more applications-focused networks.

All of the Cisco Collaboration Solutions offers contribute towards achieving a set of objectives: Build trust and accelerate decisions with rich, real-time Interactions; connect the right people with the right information; accelerate team performance; collaborate with confidence across companies; and optimize IT investments. In this context, according to John Chambers, CEO, Cisco, "collaboration will affect every industry. It will change service, sales, and business models. It will change the size, scope, and number of projects a company can take on. And it will change the speed of implementation." According to Cisco, companies that create a culture of collaboration will move ideas instead of people, reduce travel without sacrificing personal connections, improve decision making speed, work in environmentally sustainable ways, and increase productivity on a global scale.

What I particularly like about the Cisco launch is that the overused term Unified Communications (UC) is not used to describe or categorize any one product or service. It's a given that virtually all offers from the same designer and developer should be "unified" in the sense of connectivity and/or interoperability, and several new Cisco offers also help "unify" communications and collaboration solutions across multi-vendor networks and endpoints. Collaboration has a greater sense of meaning to customers that UC does not, an important marketing objective most purveyors of so-called UC solutions sometimes forget. "Communications and collaboration" is a cleaner and more descriptive term of what customers need and want to do. Unify is a more technical term that individual system subscribers care little about when performing everyday work tasks. A subscriber is more apt to say he/she requires communications or collaboration with other subscribers, but few (if any) would ever say they need to "unify."

Cisco Strategic Direction for Collaboration

The Cisco strategic direction for collaboration has the following key elements as illustrated in the following chart:

Underlying Cisco's strategic direction, according to the company, is the belief that collaboration has been moving from text and document-centric to communications and people centric. In today's environment where meeting participants are likely to be dispersed across many locations, video is the optimal way to communicate, if a medianet is available to support the technical requirements. Video as a transformative element, as cited previously, is central to the communications and collaboration experience, as is the role of a medianet. Videoconferencing in the past has been used selectively and sparingly, mainly due to infrastructure/services costs, difficulty implementing and managing, and lack of integration with other communications and collaboration processes, but today's video market is characterized by rapidly declining costs, easier to use and manage systems, and interoperability with other communications/collaboration tools.

The rapid growth of social networking is also quickly changing how individuals interact, Cisco observes. In the world of business, social networking can tear down the barriers and rigidly structured silos that traditionally isolated individuals from each other to give way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities. More projects will be performed by "clusters of experts" and these groups can be formed dynamically to achieve a shared outcome, according to the company. The self-organizing cycle will continually repeat itself as needed. It is a more efficient and agile process to produce faster results, since experts are drawn to projects rather than assigned top down. Experts will be identified by tagging their network activities, e.g. applications enabled or websites visited. Cisco envisions Enterprise Social Software as the means to enable this type of new work environment. Although social networking in the consumer world has become the fourth most popular online activity, even passing personal email, it has evolved very slowly in the business world. Cisco has identified four key requirements to increase acceptance in the business world: security, availability, quality of service, and reliability. In time, social networking will dramatically change the way business people work and interact.

As collaboration extends beyond an individual enterprise's firewalls to include individuals across other organizations, be it partners, suppliers, or customers, inter-company collaboration will demand a new level of cross-firewall security comparable to that behind any one company firewall, according to Cisco. A few vertical market sectors, such as manufacturing and retail, have been influential in the development of secure inter-company communications and collaboration, because of the nature of business today.

For example, many manufacturers today have become assemblers, outsourcing elements of the manufacturing process to other companies, and therefore they need to operate seamlessly across corporate boundaries and firewalls without security concerns. The same holds true for large brick and mortar retailers, such as Wal-Mart, and online retailers, such as Amazon, who increasingly depend on their suppliers for a variety of operations, such as warehousing and shipping, for which the retailer previously had primary responsibility. For example, a Wal-Mart or Amazon may be the direct contact point for customers, but efficient order fulfillment is highly dependent on communications and collaboration with their suppliers. The necessity for a seamless supply chain management process across companies requires a high level of security.

Flexible deployment models are required based on individual company objectives, their IT resources and priorities. Enterprise solutions and Cloud-based services will each play integral roles in enabling a comprehensive collaboration platform--especially inter-company collaboration. Cisco's vision at the infrastructure layer is to blend the best of both worlds to offer the robustness, security and performance of the enterprise network with the openness and flexibility of a Cloud service, such as Cisco WebEx. Customers should not have to choose one platform or the other, and most today have been looking toward deploying a mix.

A top priority for Cisco is to support an interoperable, open architecture. Cisco points out that individuals inside an organization, their outside partners and customers operate in different workspaces, with different applications, on different devices and operating systems. Without broad and deep interoperability, inter-company collaboration is difficult to achieve, if not impossible.

Announcements

One must immediately take notice of the range and depth of the launch, spanning across each of the seven Cisco Collaboration Solution categories. It is an impressive array of new products and services that further enhances Cisco's position in the communications and collaboration market space. The following are brief descriptions of the key new offers.

Cisco TelePresence WebEx Engage (Available 1H2010)
This product combines Cisco TelePresence with Cisco WebEx Meeting Center into a single collaborative solution. With this offer, users can attend meetings using Cisco's two distinct, but now complementary, collaboration solutions, with an improved user experience and greater productivity. It offers simple scheduling and "one button to push" meeting starts using a Cisco Unified IP telephone instrument. Cisco TelePresence video appears in the WebEx interface, and content is shared automatically in both Cisco TelePresence rooms and on WebEx. The meeting can also include distributed participants in non-video mode, i.e. audio, only.

Cisco Unified IP Phone 9900 and 8900 Series (Available 1H2010)
The newest generation of Cisco Unified IP phones includes some enhanced design attributes and a few new features and functions. The look of the new generation of Cisco Unified IP Phones is also different than the first generation 7900 Series.

The new models have integrated high-resolution (640 x 480 VGA quality) color displays capable of 30 frames per second CIF or 24 frames per second VGA and premier audio with high fidelity voice. USB ports for peripheral accessories are included and there is a "deep sleep" option to reduce energy requirements. Another Green Initiative is the use of recyclable plastic molding. The 9900 Series also feature support for interactive, multi-party H.264 video using a built-in Cisco Unified Video camera, a Bluetooth interface to increase station user mobility, and built-in Wi-Fi for instrument portability.

The video elements are part of a major Cisco theme for enhancing the collaboration experience. There are also a variety of modular handsets to suit the tastes of individual station users. The 8900/9900 Series will work with Unified Communications Manager (UCM) or UCM Business Edition (BE) Software Edition 7.1(3) or later. The Cisco Unified 9971 IP Phone is shown below:

The next three offers are designed to support security and policy for business-to-business collaboration across firewalls in any medium, including: email, IM, WebEx, UC, and telepresence.

Continue reading the rest of the article HERE

Hotels Find Keeping Travelers at Home Can Be Good Business

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:42:15 -0500

Executives of Cisco Systems and Tata Communications at a telepresence suite at the Taj Boston hotel

By SUSAN STELLIN
Published: November 9, 2009

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," may be the best maxim to explain why travel companies are getting into the virtual meeting business, actually helping clients avoid flying halfway around the globe.

Two of the world's biggest hotel companies, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Marriott International, are outfitting some of their meeting rooms with telepresence suites, a high-end system that leapfrogs typical videoconferencing technology. Their goal is to rent the rooms to customers who are already embracing virtual alternatives to travel, but do not have telepresence suites everywhere they would like to use them.

"Major multinational companies have this technology in their corporate headquarters," said David Townshend, Marriott's senior vice president for sales. "But it's expensive, so they've looked to Marriott and some other providers to really extend their footprint into regional locations."

Telepresence technology has been around for several years, but analysts say the business model for public rooms, which rent for about $500 an hour, is converging with tight travel budgets to create a more compelling reason for companies to give it a try. The technology itself has also improved, eliminating the delays that can make the typical videoconferencing experience awkward.

The telepresence suites are intended to make participants feel as if they are meeting face-to-face: when you walk into the room, there is half a conference table facing high-definition screens that project life-size images of people sitting in similar suites elsewhere in the world.

To enhance the feeling of being in the same room, the other half of the table appears on screen, participants' eyes are at the same level and the walls are even painted the same color.

"With telepresence, you really feel like you can look people in the eye and get a real sense of what they're about," said Richard Redelfs, a general partner with Foundation Capital, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif., that has rented suites at a nearby Cisco Systems office to meet virtually with entrepreneurs in India.

"I'm a people person and that's the nature of the venture business, so I was a little skeptical about the experience," Mr. Redelfs said. "But it's amazing. There's no latency in the system -- when you say something you get an immediate response. Psychologically, you really start behaving like you're face to face."

Although the company does not use telepresence often enough to buy its own suite, which can cost $200,000 plus charges for network services and support, renting one has turned out to be an efficient and economical way for all nine partners to size up the founders of far-flung start-ups before deciding on an investment. (A few partners still make the trip to meet in person before anyone writes a check.)

That is precisely the type of business Starwood and Marriott are hoping to capture, along with revenue from customers who travel to metropolitan markets to use the telepresence suites for recruiting interviews, legal depositions and other small meetings.

"There's an opportunity for us not just to host a meeting but also to host room nights for people traveling to those hubs," said Mary Casey, a vice president at Starwood, which plans to have at least two telepresence suites open by the end of the year, with more following in 2010.

Starwood locations in development include hotels in New York, Sydney, Toronto, Los Angeles and Chicago, while Marriott plans to open its first telepresence suite at the New York Marriott East Side in December, followed by hotels in San Francisco and Bethesda, Md.

Both hotel companies are working with Cisco, a leader in telepresence technology, with about 3,100 of its suites installed by customers worldwide.

There are other providers as well, among them Polycom, Teliris, Hewlett-Packard and Tandberg (which Cisco is seeking to acquire). And one of the challenges has been to link the technology of those various systems and getting network providers to talk to each other. Cisco, for instance, works with Tata Communications at Starwood's properties and the Taj Boston hotel and has worked with AT&T at the Marriott hotels. "You've got to make it possible for all these various networks to hook up to each other," said Scott Morrison, a vice president with the technology research company Gartner. "That will help grow the demand for these rooms."

The telepresence providers are also seeking to expand the number of suites by introducing more that can be rented by the public.

"The value goes up every time somebody else gets connected," said David Hsieh, a marketing vice president with Cisco, which hopes to have 50 public suites open by early next year.

In fact, some companies that have telepresence technology are incorporating it into their travel booking systems, Mr. Morrison said, so employees consider it as a choice in lieu of taking a trip.

Seizing on that trend, travel companies like American Express and Carlson Wagonlit Travel plan to help clients weigh whether to use a telepresence suite and then to reserve a room. The move is meant to expand, not chip away at, their core travel booking business.

"Travel is about connecting people with each other, and traditionally that means putting people on planes, on trains and in automobiles, but the recession has changed that environment considerably," said Alicia Tillman, a vice president with American Express.

"Offering telepresence as a different option to still connect people with each other is a method that we fully expect our client companies are going to adopt and embrace."

[via NY Times]

Cisco extends offer period for Tandberg bid

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:50:57 -0500

By Richard Solem and Ritsuko Ando

OSLO/NEW YORK - Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) extended on Monday its $3 billion tender offer for Tandberg ASA (TAA.OL) by nine days, after some shareholders of the Norwegian videoconferencing company demanded a higher price.

Cisco, the largest U.S. network equipment maker, said it would extend its offer, originally due to expire on Monday, to November 18, but the terms and conditions of its 153.50 crown-per-share offer would remain unchanged until then.

Analysts said they expect Cisco to sweeten its bid, possibly to around 160 crowns or 170 crowns. Tandberg shares were up 0.53 percent at 151.80 crowns on Monday and Cisco shares were up 0.3 percent at $23.90.

ABG Sundal Collier analyst Hallgeir Hollup said he believes that Tandberg, the world's leader in videoconferencing products, is worth more.

"We also believe that Cisco will hike the bid," he said.

Cisco did not disclose the tally of shareholders who had tendered their shares and those who hadn't, although groups representing around 30 percent of shareholders have publicly opposed the deal.

A spokesman for Cisco's Norwegian agent, Carnegie, told Reuters that information about how many shares were tendered would be released on Tuesday.

The U.S. company reiterated its statement that its offer represents a good premium and is backed by Tandberg's board of directors.

"We believe that we're paying a fair price for a quality asset," a Cisco spokeswoman said after announcing the extension.

Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers said last week that he believed the company could close the Tandberg deal but also raised the prospect of walking away, saying that there was no such thing as a "must have" deal.

KEY GROWTH AREA

While walking away is indeed an option, few analysts expect Cisco to opt for that, as it has repeatedly touted online videoconferencing as a key growth area.

Many analysts said they expect Cisco to negotiate with dissenting shareholders. Aside from a higher offer, analysts have said possible scenarios include Cisco accepting a lower stake, waiving its initial requirement that 90 percent of Tandberg shareholders tender their shares.

But analysts have said Cisco may be uncomfortable with a limited stake, particularly as this would be its first public European takeover.

Tandberg's products would help fill the gap between Cisco's high-end, TelePresence video meeting service for executives and its WebEx online meeting software.

A combination of Tandberg's expertise in videoconferencing and Cisco's sales prowess would create a strong market leader, analysts have said.

Rune Selmar, director at investment firm Rasmussengruppen, part of the dissident group, confirmed that it had not accepted the offer and noted that Cisco had not changed its terms.

"As such, there's no reason to reassess the offer," Selmar said.

Amund Lunde, chief executive of Oslo Pensjonsforsikring, another opponent, reiterated his stance.

"We repeat what we have said earlier, that Tandberg is worth more than what Cisco has offered, and there's nothing in our assessment that has changed in that respect."

Analysts have said Cisco's offer, regardless of when and how it closed, could trigger more deals involving video conferencing companies like No. 2 player Polycom Inc (PLCM.O). Other technology companies like Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) also offer high-end video conferencing.

Cisco could keep extending the deadline and continue to negotiate with shareholders for a maximum of 10 weeks, or until mid-December.

($1=5.627 Norwegian Crown)

(Reporting by Richard Solem in Oslo and Ritsuko Ando in New York, with additional reporting by Joergen Frich in Oslo; editing by Tiffany Wu and Gerald E. McCormick)

[via Reuters]

Cisco undervalues Tandberg, investment firms say

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:54:17 -0500

Two investment consulting companies laid out objections to Cisco's US$3 billion offer for Norwegian videoconferencing vendor Tandberg on Friday, saying in an open letter to Cisco and a press interview that the bid undervalues Tandberg.

Cisco and Tandberg announced the deal on Oct. 1, but it still needs to be approved by Tandberg's shareholders. The agreement requires owners of 90 percent of the company's shares to sign off on the acquisition by Nov. 9. According to recent media reports, holders of 24 percent of Tandberg stock don't plan to accept the deal. Cisco suggested on Monday that it might drop its offer rather than raise it.

Acquiring Tandberg, one of the major suppliers of videoconferencing equipment, would expand Cisco's already strong position in technology for virtual meetings. Cisco has high-definition, immersive videoconferencing systems in its Telepresence line as well as desktop collaboration offerings in its WebEx line. Chairman and CEO John Chambers has said video is the key application that will shape communications and drive network infrastructure growth in the coming years.

Panta Capital Managing Director Peter Germonpre said in an interview that Cisco would have to offer at least 170 Norwegian Kroner per share, about 11 percent above the current bid of 153.5 Kroner, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Germonpre reportedly said Panta and investment consultants Scott & Associates own less than 1 percent of Tandberg but have heard other shareholders take the same view.

In an open letter on behalf of Tandberg shareholders, addressed to Chambers and Chief Strategy Officer Ned Hooper, Panta and Scott said Cisco isn't offering enough of a premium.

Among other things, the consultants said Tandberg's third-quarter financial results beat the consensus estimates of analysts for revenue and profit. In addition, they said estimates of the company's 2009 results have fallen by only about 9 percent, outperforming estimates for the technology sector and for Tandberg rival Polycom, which fell between about 30 percent and 45 percent. They said Cisco is valuing Tandberg on a par with Polycom while the Norwegian company is actually outperforming its competitor.

When the deal was announced, Cisco said its offer represented a 38.3 percent premium over Tandberg's share price on July 15, which Cisco said was just before the company's stock started to rise because of takeover speculation. Panta and Scott rejected that argument, saying Tandberg had been seen as a takeover target before then.

Cisco reiterated its position on the Tandberg offer in a prepared statement.

"We believe we are paying a fair price for a quality asset, and our offer comes recommended by the Tandberg Board of Directors," Cisco said. "Further, Cisco's general approach to M&A activities is that no acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness."

[via ComTeken]

Theme-park dummy trick becomes teleconference tool

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:24:58 -0500

Video: Humanoid teleconferencing

by Tom Simonite, New Scientist

A theme-park animatronic trick could allow people act more naturally in videoconferences.

Shader lamps is a technique that projects an animated face that looks three-dimensional onto a dummy's blank face. Now the trick has been exploited to project a person's features onto a animatronic double somewhere else.

Before the dummy's blank polystyrene face can be brought to life, the real person has to have still photographs taken from the front and side to create a 3D model of their head. This model allows the output from a single camera to be distorted to make an image that looks right when projected onto the dummy.

The user wears a headband that is tracked by a camera so that the remote dummy can swivel and tilt its head to match their movements. An audio feed with a slight delay built in means that the person's words are synchronised with their movements, and the person being projected can see the scene around their remote double thanks to a panoramic camera in the dummy's head.
Second-class citizen

The video above shows the animatronic shader-lamps avatar demonstrated by a comedian at a recent conference. The system has a number of advantages over conventional screen-based video conferencing, says Greg Welch, the computer scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leading the project with his colleague Henry Fuchs.

"In existing 2D videoconferencing systems, the remote person is kind of a second-class citizen: they're in this box sitting in one place, they look different," says Welch.

"And then there are technical problems," adds Welch. The camera position in conventional videoconferencing makes it hard for viewers to judge where an on-screen interlocutor is looking, which is particularly problematic, he says: "It often looks like you're not paying attention."

Those problems are minimized in his system, he says, because the remote person's eye and head movements are accurately replayed in real time.
Self-assertion

The most sophisticated commercially available teleconferencing systems can cost upwards of $1 million, says Wijnand IJsselsteijn, a member of a European consortium working on a separate 3D teleconferencing system. "But they still suffer problems in conveying eye contact and gaze direction naturally."

Using projection-augmented dummies is a novel way to address that, he says, and should also make it easier for a person not in the room to have an equal part in a conversation.

"When you're the remote person, it's really hard to get the attention of the room," IJsselsteijn explains. "But when you can move something in that room you have a much more physical presence." Simply turning your head would allow you to assert yourself, because the movement would be mirrored by the avatar, he says. "Irrespective of how realistic it is, that's a new way to gain attention."
Mobile avatar

A range of improvements are planned to the prototype: for example, using multiple projectors to cover the sides as well as the front of the dummy's. A mobile version is also planned: "One of the inspirations for this system was a conversation with a prominent physician who asked if we could make it possible for him to visit remote patients as a tangible avatar," explains Fuchs.

It could also be a boon to patients, he adds. "There are people all over the world who are unable for medical reasons to leave their house," says Fuchs. A mobile version of this system could provide a "prosthetic presence" they could use to venture out and interact with other people, he says.

The animatronic shader-lamps avatar was presented at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Orlando, Florida, last week.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

[via New Scientist]

Sony demos game controller to track motion and emotion

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:11:56 -0500

Video: Hands-free control

By Colin Barras, New Scientist

The latest games console arms race - to perfect hands-free, full-body game control - just got more competitive.

Sony has unveiled just such a system called Interactive Communication Unit or ICU, at the Vision 2009 trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany. It uses stereo cameras to watch a player and, like a pair of eyes, to judge depth.

Microsoft unveiled its own full body controller in the summer summer, Project Natal, due to be released for the Xbox 360 games console late in 2010.

Like Natal, Sony's system tracks a person's whole body without their having to wear the body markers used in motion-capture studios. Also like Natal, Sony says ICU can detect a player's emotions by watching their facial expressions, and can judge sex and approximate age from their appearance.

Full-body tracking

Sony Europe's image-sensing division created ICU in collaboration with Atracsys, a small firm in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specialises in optical tracking.

Atracsys already sells a system that gives medics hands-free control of computers in sterile environments, called Infinitrack. But its users have to wear small reflective markers like those used in a movie industry motion-capture studio; previous versions required users to wear particular colours.

Casual users can't be expected to do that, says Gaëtan Marti, CEO of Atracsys, which limits the system's precision.

Finger signs

"We cannot at present detect 'finger signs' [but] we can detect where you are looking at on the screen - up, middle, down - and the raw position of your arms [or legs]," he says.

ICU's stereo cameras can detect the position of specific points on the arms, legs and head to within 10 cubic centimetres, compared with the 0.2 cubic millimetre accuracy of Infinitrack.

ICU 'reads' facial expressions using a pattern-matching algorithm that has been trained on pictures of people expressing different emotions. Using cues such as the position and shape of the lips, ICU spots five basic states: happiness, anger, surprise, sadness and neutral.

It also has the ability to tune out the visual clutter around a player that could otherwise distort its results. "Once it detects a face 2 metres in front of the cameras, the system can isolate the person by only keeping the information between 1.5 and 2.5 metres away," Marti says.

Immersive advertising

Sophisticated as it is, however, ICU isn't yet going to be launched into the punishing domestic entertainment market, says Arnaud Destruels, marketing manager at Sony's image-sensing division.

"It's clear that if the consumer has a bad experience with the technology they could reject it without giving it a second chance."

Instead ICU is going to be launched first into the world of advertising, which will be its training ground, says Destruels. Interactive shop windows and billboards will provide a chance to iron out wrinkles in the system and to familiarise people with the concept, he says.

Real-time problem

Christian Theobalt, at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, agrees that people won't be forgiving of a novel interface's failings. "For the consumer to accept this technology it has to work robustly in real time."

Last year Theobalt developed a markerless motion-capture system that uses eight cameras and can track even the sway of clothing. But its footage has to be processed after the fact, a luxury ICU doesn't have.

"If real-time performance is the goal, one has to reduce complexity, which reduces the accuracy one achieves," he explains. Sony will have to balance aiming for complex gesture recognition with the need for dependable performance.

[via New Scientist]