telepresence
Last week, we talked about some of the challenges facing telepresence interoperability. While the vendors and standards bodies sort out interopability, several trends are converging to accelerate telepresence adoption even further. First, workers are becoming even more distributed. Second, the availability of systems is increasing. And finally, the recession continues to drive organizations to reduce travel expenses.
Nearly three-quarters of companies Nemertes works with are deploying or planning to deploy some form of video conferencing within their organizations, with the strongest growth areas being desktop and telepresence.
Telepresence combines high-definition video conferencing with dedicated room designs where the lighting, furniture, camera and sound enhancements are designed to create a virtual-reality environment. Thirty-eight percent of companies we work with are deploying or planning to deploy the technology. Of those, 71% represented organizations of at least 1,000 employees while 36% of those with no plans for deployment were organizations of less than 250 employees. The biggest drawback most have to the solution is cost. Systems typically cost at least $200,000 per room in capital costs, plus significant ongoing costs for bandwidth (2 Mbps to 6 Mbps per screen, up to three screens per room).
With this sort of price tag, it’s not surprising that users are turning to other solutions to dip their toes into telepresence—particularly, hosted telepresence. Carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, BT, Tata and Orange Telecom are beginning to offer hosted telepresence services on an infrastructure designed to support multiple customers. Billing is generally based on installation costs, coupled with monthly service and usage costs. Typical features include:
- Managed WAN transport and/or hosted video network operations centers (VNOC) for performance and security management.
- Hosted video bridges for multi-party conferences.
- External connectivity enabling telepresence users to schedule and establish conference sessions across company boundaries.
Differentiators include things like geographic coverage, pricing, and ability to integrate with existing or planned unified communications and/or video conferencing solutions.
Bottom line: If you’re interested in telepresence, but spooked by the cost, take a look at hosted offerings.
