Telepresence poised to become mainstream
I speak regularly at a variety of conferences, and the topic of telepresence always emerges. I am surprised at how few IT people have yet to see a demonstration of or be part of a telepresence session. Though the number of people raising their hands is increasing, it’s still only about 30-40% of the room (up from about 20-25% about a year ago).
Telepresence is a technology poised to become mainstream as costs decline, making it more affordable to more businesses. Basically, once people experience telepresence, they want the technology. Already, about 28% of organizations are using telepresence, according to Nemertes’ latest research.
If you’re in IT, and you’re trying to build a business case—or build consensus—for the technology, get your executives involved early in the process. Time after time, I talk to IT professionals who say, “Once the [CXO] sat in a telepresence meeting, the business case was done!”
Frankly, C-level executive are not as concerned about payback as they are about quality of life. If telepresence can help them skip even a few weeks of travel in a given year, that improves their lives and is worth the cost.
Prior to telepresence (and to some extent, high-definition, single-screen video conferencing), executives were leery of video-conferencing technology. The picture quality often was fuzzy and the transmission choppy. And getting the systems to work regularly required a call to the IT help desk.
Today, telepresence quality is high. And the vendors have made the technology straight-forward to use—though many companies rely on a concierge service to provide responsive support to demanding executives.
For those who have not experienced telepresence, it truly is the next-best thing to being there (other than the future 3-D or hologram telepresence). The people on the screens are life-size, and they’re sitting at a table the same color, height, and size as where you’re sitting. Furniture matches, and directional acoustics deliver sound from where the person is sitting. Picture quality is clear, and it’s easy to pick up facial expressions and body language that is so critical to business decisions.
Telepresence certainly pushes the boundaries of the workplace. Moving forward, as more companies use third-party carriers to manage telepresence systems, we’ll see the technology push the traditional borders of networks. Rather than limiting telepresence meetings to your internal employees, bridges in the service-provider networks will expand the capabilities to business partners, as well.
Next week, we’ll take a deeper look at making the business case for telepresence.
