The Telepresence Revolution


Box 1. Differentiators with video conferencing tools


Video conferencing (VC) technologies are often shunned by executives who remain unconvinced by this legacy technology. However, telepresence differs in a number of ways, amongst which are its: • Simplicity: with some of the newer telepresence solutions, once a meeting is scheduled it can be started with just a push of a button. This is refreshingly simple compared to some legacy VC systems which required dialing-in to IP addresses. This could be particularly challenging for multiple location meetings and dissuade employees even before using this technology.


• Immersive Experience: the high end telepresence solutions have the actual size, high definition screens plus spatial audio, special lighting, furniture and finely tuned equipment to provide a real sense of immersion that makes real time meetings as life-like as possible.


• Reliability: telepresence is significantly more reliable than VC. Dedicated bandwidth means that meetings are in real-time (with no latency issues), are not pixilated and, importantly, are not dropped unexpectedly.


• Privacy: many telepresence rooms are acoustically insulated and technically designed to maximize confidentiality of meetings. Security can be enhanced with various network and encryption implementations so executives are comfortable using them for board meetings and other confidential discussions.


• Security: telepresence systems use encrypted network channels, providing the required IT security to assure the confidentiality of meetings.


“ Once you schedule a meeting, it just shows up on the phone and you press a button to start it. People value the simplicity.”


Vid Byanna, Executive Director, Global Infrastructure Accenture


“ Before using telepresence we had video conferencing equipment which was rarely used: it was unpredictable, experienced delays and went wrong all the time. It was simply not used.”


Zelda Bentham, Senior Environment Manager, Aviva


9


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24