Cisco tackles videoconferencing

Over the years billions have been invested in videoconferencing. It was always the "next big thing", but only now is the technology delivering on its promises.

By Ian Murphy, 1 Feb 2007 at 14:07

gallery

We viewed and used the system at a Cisco office in which the company had not managed to complete the environmental factors. The system performed very well but sound from other rooms was noticeable.

Future expansion

The system is, at the moment, just a point to point solution. You can only talk to another Cisco Telepresence solution and the multi-point Telepresence solution won't be available until sometime later this year with Cisco refusing to even say which quarter it is expected to ship.

Underpinning Telepresence are key standards, H264 for video and SIP for the audio. Yet Cisco is refusing to allow other vendors to talk to Telepresence. Why? Cisco believes that no-one else can match the quality of what they are doing and that if they had designed the system to be interoperable, it would have delayed launch by at least 12-18 months.

Getting the system installed is also going to be a little bit of a challenge. Cisco has not yet created a new certification for Telepresence and has severely restricted the numbers of dealers it will train. Without a formal certification Cisco has removed one of the main reasons people get trained on Cisco equipment. There has also been a decision not to talk to the leading audio visual specialist suppliers. This is only going to be sold through the Cisco channels. Videoconferencing companies learned early on that you need a lot of skills to setup a room and Cisco, despite its early efforts, clearly hasn't taken the complexity seriously enough to talk to the experts in this market.

Given all of this, a company with 10 global offices setting up a single room in each office, could expect a bill of $3m. Meetings would be restricted due to the lack of multipoint and they would expect an additional bill for Cisco Call Manager v5 and for environment treatment of the room. This would easily talk the total to over $3.5m.

So why do this? It's all about the money and your green credentials. Not the money you spend with them but the money you save from travelling and reducing your corporate carbon footprint. Assuming that your staff travel economy class both regional and international, your average ticket is likely to be around $750. To save $3.5m you would need to eliminate 4,667 journeys. Even if you had 12 people (6 real, 6 remote/virtual) in each meeting you would need 388 meetings. In reality, you won't have full meetings and you will need substantially more meetings.

Cisco expects to save $100m by July 2007 on its travel budget and the Telepresence solution is expected to deliver most if not all of this. Customers who have seen the system are also looking to use it to cut their carbon emissions.