No Telepresence?

Great point about telepresence-- please refer back to our newsletter last week on the topic. Here's the link for "Up close and personal with telepresence." 

If I can belatedly add a little analysis to the original telepresence mention: Telepresence is a great technology, but I think that many more enterprise users (by counting users and not companies) will benefit from Unified Communications than by Telepresence for years to come. Note that in my assumption, I don't count desktop video conferences or standard definition video when I consider this; rather a true Telepresence requires HD video and very high quality audio. Until the cost per user (including the costs of equipment and especially the costs of bandwidth) come down a bit, I think most users will stick to voice, email, and UC. As a "horizontal application" UC has a much broader and more immediate appeal. Your thoughts?

Steve and Larry, if we’re talking about carrier offerings, we couldn’t agree more that Mobile UC is far off in the distant future. But as far as an enterprise solution – that is controlled and managed by corporate IT – Mobile UC is already here today. There is no carrier dependency with a vendor-agnostic, enterprise solution like DiVitas. Furthermore, the ubiquity of 3G is definitely not a hurdle to Mobile UC’s success. For DiVitas’ part, we work seamlessly over 2G and 2.5G (both available in the U.S.), and also over 3G in Europe (where the network technology is more advanced.)

All of the pieces of the Mobile UC ecosystem are now in place (and available today) for a solution like DiVitas to work.

· FMC (seamless roaming between WiFi and cellular)

· UC apps (IM, presence, email, contacts, etc.)

· Portable PBX deskphone functions (reachable by a single number and on a single mobile phone that behaves exactly as your deskphone)

All that’s left is for companies to realize the productivity gains Mobile UC can bring.

During the period of the next ten years while UC/FMC goes from being ten ways to do something to two or three, there will be the need for transitional technology to facilitate and/or increase the cost effectiveness of whatever your uc/FMC looks like today while being adaptable to future requirements. Cellular Gateways are an excellent example of transitional technology. They are PBX agnostic and, once Verizon and Sprint get their act together, carrier agnostic. Until then, advantage at&t and T-Mobile, a fact that has not escaped them. For the end user, reductions in paid pooled minutes of 30% or more while enhancing emergency response/disaster recovery plans along with increased productivity and enhanced customer interaction. For saturated cellular industry, an untapped source of new line activations and a reduction of churn rate (they now have equipment residing one level deeper in the client’s telecom network). For the phone system vendor, a new sale to an existing client or to a new client. Win, Win, Win.
Fred Palacios Director of Sales ITS Telecom