Posts Tagged ‘TelePresence’

In the past, fans would have been delighted to get an autograph or maybe a photo with their sporting heroes. So imagine the excitement at the prospect of actually taking part in an interview with global sports stars. On July 14th 2010, participants from all over the world had that opportunity when they got involved in a live telepresence interview with football legend David Beckham.

In his role as Global Sports Ambassador, and using powerful telepresence solutions from Cisco, Beckham fielded rapid fire questions about his football career, his private life and even revealed a secret passion for playing with Lego. The interview, conducted at Cisco’s office near London, was also streamed live to over 600 million Yahoo! users around the world. This is yet another example of the versatility of video communications, as well as showing how the world of professional sport is embracing the technology.

Recently, NBA legend Derek Fisher used video conferencing technology to conduct similar interviews between multiple global sites. It has even been reported that fellow NBA star LeBron James used telepresence to hold meetings while deciding the next step in his playing career. The basketball player, who recently elected to end his career with the Cleveland Cavaliers, would have saved hundreds of hours and dollars whilst still being able to communicate face-to-face with prospective new managers and teammates.

Other examples can be seen in Germany, where the national governing body for football used video conferencing to conduct meetings with players at clubs spread across the country. This significantly reduced the travel demands for players and coaching staff. After the successes of the all round experience the Deutscher Fußball-Bund (DFB – German Football Federation) extended their use of the technology to keep in contact with the team during the most recent World Cup in South Africa. Similarly, sports broadcaster ESPN also adopted video communication technology to conduct live interviews for their coverage of this global event.

The increasing popularity of video communication technology within the sporting world demonstrates the versatility of video conferencing and telepresence solutions, and just how effective they can be beyond the boardroom.

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Verizon is the only company in the US to bring fiber to the home on a national network. Verizon FiOS services, which offer the fastest broadband and ultimate home-entertainment experience. Verizons ultra-fast, broadband networks already help customers reduce their travel through high-definition video conferencing, teleworking and by facilitating e-commerce. Verizon IP and Broadband for Business The company also operates the nations most reliable wireless network and the worlds most interconnected IP network, which serve as a platform for communications and commerce worldwide. Small and large businesses rely on Verizon wireline and wireless communications and IT solutions to operate effectively in the US and around the globe. Verizon Business handles millions of virtual meetings each month through a wide range of audio, video and Web-conferencing offerings, IP- based services, and some of the most advanced meeting tools available today, like telepresence.

LifeSize Passport is the first truly portable telepresence-quality system; Passport is so small, it fits in the palm of your hand.

Designed to dramatically improve the effectiveness of video-based meetings, the Magor TeleCollaboration HDWorkPlace family seamlessly integrates advanced data collaboration capabilities into a peer-to-peer, 1080p video conferencing experience. Magor’s advanced collaboration capabilities allow permitted participants to see, control and edit shared files and documents in real time. So, instead of “talk now, do later”, users conduct working visual collaboration sessions that allow them to make decisions, get work done and produce results more quickly. By extending basic video scaling principles with segmentation and adaptation, Magor TeleCollaboration sets the benchmark for Good Network Citizenship for enterprise video conferencing solutions. Able to adapt in real time to varying network conditions and end-user behavior, Magor’s flexible video compression processes protect critical network traffic and applications while delivering 1080p video and collaboration including over best effort IP packet network connections such as the Internet. More information at www.MagorCorp.com

From the immersive suite to mobile desktop, Polycom Telepresence Solutions use standards-based interoperability to connect to the millions of existing telepresence and video conferencing systems deployed around the world today.

The impact of the turndown in the USA has encouraged more companies to look to video conferencing to reduce their travel budgets.

The demand for video conferencing  and renting public video conference facilities by the hour is increasing rapidly this year.  As it is possible to hire a video conference facility for an hour or two in the majority of countries around the world, the use of video conferencing facilities is an obvious time and money saving decision.

Senior Management, tired of travel, are asking their PA’s to get them a video conference meeting to save on time, whilst neatly ticking budget and CSR requirements.

For companies who have their own equipment it makes sense to hire a public video conference facility to link with someone who does not have equipment.

In addition to ‘point to point’ meetings, video conference booking agency Eyenetwork (http://www.eyenetwork.us.com) has seen an increase in what are known as multipoint meetings, 3 sites or more.  It is clear that CEOs are starting to see the value of delivering a single message in one hit to all board members and senior management – in several countries at once.  Major decisions have been made, and key accounts won, all using this technology. The message is heard by all at once with no dilution of its impact.

As yet, there is no easily accessible public telepresence network.  This is due to the propriety nature of some of the systems and the fact that their bandwidth exists on VPN’s.  However, Telepresence has bought a tide of welcome publicity for the video conference industry. Tandberg, Cisco, Polycom and HP are leading the field with their life-size, high bandwidth, multi-functional systems connecting on at least 5mb bandwidth.  This publicity has raised the profile of existing video conferencing  solutions and raised demand overall.

Within the next year or two, we envisage two tiers of video conferencing.  Companies will consider traditional video conferencing as ‘business class’, it gets you from A to B and you can meet successfully with others and see and hear them in real time.  The next level up, means meeting by ‘first class’ using telepresence suites.  There is a market for both technologies and this will be dictated by budget.

www.cisco.com Healthcare video conferencing from Cisco Telepresence provides a secure and global way to connect with your patients. Healthcare. Transformed by Cisco. As the field of medicine rapidly expands, areas of specialty increase, and more doctors will need to see more patients in more places. To answer this critical problem, Cisco is testing a real-time, HD video solution that could revolutionize the industry and give doctors the ability to see a patient anywhere in the world. We have to work smarter. We are working in an environment now where resources are becoming increasingly scarce. And if we dont change the process by which we deliver care, we are just not going to be able to treat patients. The Scottish Center for TeleHealth, we are set-up as a Center of expertise to promote the development of TeleHealth. We have used Desktop Video Conferencing from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to the fifteen Community Hospitals for the past seven years. Nurses call up for a second opinion and it saved an enormous number of patients, uh, roundtrip to Aberdeen. We have been thinking about this for quite some while. We discovered that our Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group were already working on a variant of their, a TelePresence called HealthPresence. Its the first trial of the HealthPresence Pod in the world. We are seeing patients who are coming to the ME Department to get care for their condition on that day. They are seen by a doctor initially using HealthPresence and …

Watch the full video here: www.cisco.com A short introduction to Telepresence CTS 500: mounting options, integrated cameras and sound, and more.