Video Conferencing ready to play ball
Video Conferencing ready to play ball
November/December Edition, 2007: 10,000 kilometres away from each other, colleagues are coming together in the meeting rooms of the future. It’s not quite the medium for the average enterprise just yet, but adaptive telepresence conferencing solutions are certainly turning heads as executives join meetings, continents apart.
It’s been a long time coming. Video conferencing, with it’s drop out, still frame images, dodgy audio and uncomfortable silences has faced many critics. We’re looking at a next generation, almost good enough to slam a ‘2.0’ on top of, but we won’t go there just yet.
Instead, we’re seeing technology that can safely live outside the marketing hype, primarily because it’s real, it’s innovative and it’s bound to shape the future of communications.
To an audience of journalists in Sydney, Tandberg launched and successfully demonstrated its Experia Adaptive Telepresence system, putting its spin on similar high-end offerings from Hewlett Packard and Cisco.
The business case for this latest generation of video conferencing is clear. At the high end, time poor executives are demanding the life work-balance – travelling to Chicago far from improves on spending quality time with the kids. From a stakeholder level, customers are demanding corporations mind their carbon emissions which can not be cleared up with a workforce travelling back and forth across the globe.
“With around 100 percent employment in Australia you really need to get the most out of your employees. One way of doing that is to keep them off planes. From a green point of view, it’s also keeping them out of cars,” says Phil Siefer, country manager Australia New Zealand.
In 2006, Hewlett Packard launched its Halo Collaboration Studios. BHP Billiton’s Chip Goodyear, the CEO of Australia’s largest organisation, was the first to locally host a session using the studio. Like Tandberg, Halo studios are identical in their fit-out – but built by specialist HP engineers they’re also double the price.
The Tandberg suite, even for the pessimist, is impressive. The expense will keep most organisations far away from the technology but for some high-end customers it’s ability to offer ‘real life’ features like perceived eye contact, fluid motion and spatial audio will surely be tempting. With high definition video provided, Experia can be optimised for six participants per site, offers one-touch connectivity and is inclusive of management software
Implementing an Experia Telepresence Suite however, is no easy feat, it won’t come cheap either. Although cheaper than HP, it’s still almost US$200,000 a pop (remembering you’ll also need at least two) it’s a solution design for the serious user. Keeping in mind dimensions, tables, screen and cameras need to be positioned correctly for the telepresence magic to occur. Further to this, room sizes, lighting, acoustics and furniture need to be a perfect science to take affect. Easing the confusion a little, the solution comes standard with the needed executive table, wireless control panel and Experia system.
Virtually allowing ‘natural communications,’ is the aim of the game. “We talk about natural communication because that’s what communication is about. Irony is hard to do over the phone but you achieve it on video – that’s why we call it natural communications.” said Lars Ronning, Tandberg’s president for Asia Pacific, during the demonstration of the telepresence solution where he participated from Singapore.
“The direct feedback is what this is about. It also has to do with delay, you can interrupt me, we can have a discussion,” interrupted Snorre Kjesbu, vice president at Tandberg, from his base in Norway.
Of course for the executive determined to maintain their jet setting ways, airline lounges and frequent flier points, video conferencing might not be worth bringing up at the next board level meeting. The good news is however, both HP and Tandberg have worked together to ensure their respective telepresence and videoconferencing portfolios are interoperable.