Stay tuned for footage of Teliris’ new EU headquarters opening.

While not one of my customers originally deployed telepresence solely to address business continuity planning, many of them now surely must realize the unmatched advantage of having a telepresence system in every location. My phone has been ringing off the hook  – how fast can they add telepresence systems? What network and bandwidth issues need to be addressed? Can they have priority over other requests? And this is just the beginning of a situation that will plague us for the foreseeable future. Not only could the ash from this volcanic eruption take an unknown amount of time to clear, but there is now an increasing chance that a second volcano could erupt. The effect of more travel interruptions would be disastrous for international businesses, especially those without access to telepresence.

As the CEO of an international company myself, I have experienced the effects of this event as my own flight to Europe was cancelled, several of my employees remain stuck in Europe and critical shipments have been put on hold indefinitely. Now I am the first to admit that some meetings are best done in person, but when its not an option, telepresence is the only way to ensure that business continues as usual. My hope is that from this potentially disastrous situation that businesses will learn that 1) preparedness is essential and 2) telepresence is part and parcel to a successful plan. Unfortunately in this world we live in, disasters that make travel impossible will happen again, but if prepared correctly, businesses have the option of remaining functional and productive.

Check back often for daily updates as we watch this situation unfold in the coming days and weeks.

With the breaking news on the northern EU airport shut downs surrounding volcanic activity in Iceland, today was a perfect time to kick-start my newest series of blog commentaries. Our business culture and success is so dependent on air travel volatility that some corporations will literally be stripped of a way to conduct international business for as long as the airports remain closed. It sounds ludicrous in this day and age for any company to be in that kind of predicament with the option of telepresence available. Imagine if that same company instantaneously had access to telepresence – all of a sudden their options for conducting meetings, collaboration sessions, scientific experiments or any other scenario over distance would become endless and seamless. All of a sudden, instead of scrambling for an interim solution, business would continue – uninterrupted – as usual. Telepresence delivers this very thing to companies – it provides the unequivocal guarantee that people will meet and interact as if in-person, without compromise and devoid of dependencies on the events of the outside world. This is one small benefit of telepresence among many others, but one that suddenly becomes invaluable when natural disasters such as the Iceland volcano make travel impossible.

Check this link out and stay tuned for more entries as the situation progresses…

On the recent news of Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg, I wouldn’t want to break tradition and stay silent, what fun is there in that? I won’t deny its big news for the videoconferencing industry and as with any announcement there is an upside and a downside. To start on a positive note, and of course with a slightly selfish and possibly smug comment – I couldn’t help but sit back in my chair, look at the wonderful view of NY harbor from my office and breathe a sigh of contentment because when I read the news, my very first thought was wow, the small industry that I jumpstarted way back in 1999 has just been truly validated! This acquisition has helped prove telepresence is more than just a fad, it is here to stay. Not that i didnt know this already or that my customers haven’t told me continually how Teliris Telepresence has changed their business, saved them money and dramatically increased productivity. WE already knew this, but now EVERYONE can see it as clearly as I always have.

Now for the BIG BUT…(you knew I couldn’t spend this entire commentary being positive, right?). The big glaring hole here is in the details of this acquisition. This not only shows Cisco’s inability to innovate but also highlights the many inconsistencies between the two companies that will take years to reconcile. Cisco and Tandberg are stuck in the heavy, monolithic, high priced ‘video mainframe’ infrastructure mode and will find it very difficult to compete with Teliris 6G – a  light software-based approach to telepresence. How can Cisco and Tandberg reconcile their ideas of how telepresence should work? Cisco’s switched video versus Tandberg’s MCU-centric view will present serious integration and migration challenges for both Cisco and Tandberg customers.  Will Tandberg customers migrate to Cisco, or Cisco customers to Tandberg? Either way this will not be simple, especially when you consider the required change in direction which will inevitably conflict with promises both companies have made to their customers. Lastly, how far we have come since the days of Cisco’s declaration that there was no need for interoperability. With this acquisition, it will have to become front and center! Not to rub it in, but Teliris started interoperating way back in 2007 and made it clear that it would be of ultra importance. Of course, this is just a short synopsis of my thoughts, so click on my video and get all the details.

Click here to take the Teliris 6G Challenge!

This year’s InfoComm was not quite long enough, we were just getting warmed up over at the Teliris booth with our typical in-your-face, leave nothing to your imagination marketing campaign….if you have read my posts before, then you are definitely not surprised to hear that our efforts (I can’t deny it was all my idea) were aimed to hit Cisco directly in the face…I just could not resist, they make it way too easy!! Check out the banner from our booth below and yes it was in fact facing directly into Cisco’s booth! Ohhhh it kept such a smile on my face, especially every time an attendee laughed out loud long and hard.

Teliris Banner at InfoComm

So let me set the scene – my company, Teliris, launched what we believe is the BIGGEST leap for telepresence yet, and we came equipped with the product line to show it…we announced our 6G platform which basically allows telepresence for the first time to reach anywhere, everywhere, whenever…thats a pretty big statement but make no mistake its true…and how do we do this you may wonder? Well, very simply – over any general purpose network…yup, no more heavy, monolithic, QoS/CoS networks required and with that comes a HUGE cost reduction…when I say huge, I mean a 40% reduction in network costs.

So back to the show setup (although don’t miss my latest video entry for a walkthrough of our booth) we brought a wide array of product with us, we had it all – desktop, one, two, three screen systems placed around the booth with live people coming in from the UK, NYC, CT etc. And what did Cisco show?…well, they had some really comfy black leather couches, so I can’t be totally critical…other than that, they featured one single screen system. Thats it. Nothing else. Done. As i said, sometimes its just tooooo easy! Hold on to the handrails for my next entry…as I said, we are just getting started.