Business Technology Roundtable

Today, most important executive relationships are globally distributed, but many business leaders still say that they want more collaboration in person. Particularly during activities such as brainstorming for new ideas, managing a specific crisis or making presentations. This is among the key findings from a new Economist Intelligence Unit ( EIU ) survey. While the primary function of meetings is to build relationships with customers, some 89 percent of EIU survey respondents say communications where the parties can see and respond to each other benefit internal business functions such as employee coaching and training as well as communications with partners and customers. An additional 43 percent of respondents use meetings to discuss and resolve major issues with customers such as a service or product failure or dissatisfaction with the partnership. Motivations for expanding these meetings also include contract renewals, brainstorming sessions and being introduced to other clien...

There's little doubt about the continued adoption of videoconferencing and telepresence applications over the past few years. Clearly, growth has been fueled by the increasing popularity of video communications among multinational companies around the world -- particularly with mobile video chat applications that utilize new handheld devices . According to IDC's latest market assessment, the videoconferencing and telepresence market will continue to be one of the fastest growing networking markets for the foreseeable future. "Growth has been spurred on by more well-defined video use cases among organizations across a range of vertical market segments, including healthcare, higher education, financial services, legal, law enforcement, manufacturing, and retail," said Rich Costello, senior analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC . Other industry analysts are equally enthusiastic about the market outlook, as more enterprise users find new ways to ...

Telepresence and other forms of advanced visual collaboration technologies are moving further into the mainstream of forward-looking business practices. This increase in adoption has been a global phenomenon, as more business leaders follow the numerous application examples of the early-adopters. Infonetics Research released excerpts from its second quarter 2011 (2Q11) "Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing" report. Their findings demonstrate the progress that's been made so far this year. Their latest market study provides insights on market size, vendor market share, and analysis for PBX-based video phones and software, as well as dedicated video conference infrastructure and endpoints -- including immersive telepresence and software. Forecast for Continued Double-Digit Growth For the first 6 months of 2011, enterprise telepresence and video conferencing equipment revenue is up 24 percent year-over-year -- and according to the current Infonetics market...

Verizon Communications is extending the range of its TelePresence offering to enable virtual face-to-face collaboration in more locations around the world, made possible by a new agreement with Tata Communications. The collaboration enables meetings to take place between Verizon's telepresence customers and any public or private telepresence room on the Tata Communications Global Meeting Exchange -- one of the broadest telepresence networks accessible today and a gateway to the company's public room network spanning 31 cities on five continents. This will supplement Verizon's telepresence offering powered by its expansive global Private Internet Protocol (IP) Network service. Similarly, Tata Communications telepresence customers can use Verizon's facilities to communicate with Verizon customers. Enterprise TelePresence replicates face-to-face interactions so realistically that it feels as though everyone is in the same room, even though they may be hundreds or t...

 If you're like many multinational business leaders today, then your company exists within a complex network of vendors, customers and other collaborators. This business ecosystem is as vital to you as your employees and intellectual property. Keeping it healthy helps you maintain and grow your market share, navigate challenging economic conditions, and explore new business opportunities. In many commercial scenarios, conducting international business and staying in touch with all your key stakeholders requires regular face-to-face communications. But sometimes you can accomplish your personal interaction objectives without the need to travel to distant places. Infonetics Research released its current Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing report, which provides insight and analysis of dedicated videoconference infrastructure and endpoints -- which includes the latest immersive telepresence applications. Collaborating in a Global Distributed Organization "Comm...

Companies are increasingly turning to videoconferencing solutions, whether to reduce travel costs, ensure business continuity in the event of a natural disaster, or reduce their environmental carbon footprint. Service providers are also progressively working together to advance the adoption of new video communication capabilities. Orange Business Services is offering its Telepresence Community, a solution that provides direct access to Cisco TelePresence in 800 existing meeting suites around the world, on a free trial basis. They are also promoting service interoperability with other global service providers. As an established global provider of fully managed Telepresence solutions, Orange Business Services offers video communication solutions for on-demand collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers -- using the immersive virtual meeting experience of Telepresence. "Through Telepresence Community, our B2B Telepresence solution, opening our network and customer base to ...

The reinsurance business is evolving. Traditionally, reinsurance transactions are between two insurance entities: the primary insurer that sold the original insurance policies and the reinsurer. The companies in this industry are long-standing users of advanced communications technology, now including video collaboration. Tata Communications announced that it has been chosen by German reinsurance company, Hannover Re, to deploy and run its Telepresence facilities -- serving the group’s internal teams in 18 locations across 16 countries, worldwide. Tata Communications will deploy the Cisco TelePresence high-definition, immersive video collaboration systems to help employees based in Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East and Africa collaborate with each other on a daily basis. Under this agreement, Tata Communications will provide Hannover Re with a solution that includes deployment and installation of rooms, maintenance, management and concierge service for scheduling and reservati...

American Express Business Travel and Cisco announced the global availability of public Cisco TelePresence Suites through American Express Business Travel's virtual meetings eXpert (vmX) solution. This agreement provides corporate clients with virtual meeting consulting services which will enable clients to make better decisions about the best method of face-to-face collaboration -- by leveraging publicly-available Cisco TelePresence rooms and increase use of private, corporate-owned systems around the world. Cisco TelePresence uses high-definition video and audio to create the experience of face-to-face meetings. People appear life-size around a virtual conference table, creating an environment where meeting participants feel as though they're sitting in the same room. Public Cisco TelePresence Suites offer convenient access to organizations, travelers, remote workers or business partners to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, customers and partners. Public Cisco ...

As the European aviation sector encountered major disruptions, online business meeting services attracted growing interest and new demand. Apparently, few traditional globetrotters plan for, or even anticipate, the effects of a natural disaster so many were searching for last-minute alternatives to international air travel. Online visual collaboration platforms -- that enable just-in-time face-to-face meetings -- were a natural choice for the informed business travelers who, like most of us, only recently discovered that Iceland has an active volcano. According to the latest market study by Frost & Sullivan, renewed awareness of videoconference solutions will create further opportunities for TelePresence service providers . Telepresence Market Growth Predicted Frost & Sullivan estimates the global Telepresence market value was $396.2 million for 2009, and forecasts this market to reach $825.9 million in 2015. Their research assessment included both ready-built Telepresence room...

The goal of creating a collaborative enterprise might seem like an essential requirement that all forward-looking business leaders would actively support. However, fear of the unknown sometimes makes intelligent people react in ways that, in hindsight, appear totally illogical. A case in point, Cisco announced results of a global study that found that while 77 percent of IT decision makers surveyed plan to increase spending on internal collaboration tools, company employees believe that their ability to collaborate is constrained by their own employer policies. That said, more than a quarter of those who work at organizations that prohibit the use of social media applications admitted to changing the settings on their corporate devices to gain online access -- claiming they "need the tools to get the job done." This new insight was attained by investigating practices at medium to large enterprises -- those with more than 250 employees. The study, conducted by InsightExpress,...

The American hospitality industry has suffered from the global economic meltdown. While room rates sank nearly 9 percent for the U.S. hotel industry overall, luxury hotels saw their rates decline more than 16 percent, according to a market study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Was the "frugal consumer" phenomenon to blame? Actually, they're not the main culprit. Business people that chose to travel to meet their customers and suppliers are still not likely budgeted to stay at the pricier hotel properties. What's a savvy upscale hotelier to do, given this scenario? Follow a customer demand trend that has gained momentum -- where spending has risen, based on a solid ROI justification. Starwood Hotels & Resorts unveiled its first in-hotel Cisco TelePresence meeting suites with a virtual, interactive meeting spanning across two continents. The W Chicago City Center and Sheraton on the Park Sydney are the first in Starwood's global portfolio to introduce the new meeti...

The business case made the argument for Kline & Company , a management consulting and research firm about to celebrate its 50th anniversary, to investigate hosted videoconferencing. A global company, it handles approximately 40 projects at any given time. Three to six people collaborate on each project, which last three months on average. About three-quarters of its projects are global. To collaborate and share knowledge, team members confer approximately 20 times over the duration of a project. That's thousands of in-person meetings over the course of a year, between colleagues and clients who are unlikely to be in the same location. The cost -- both financially and in terms of time -- was becoming prohibitive. Serving Client Needs Companies benefit from management consulting firms' insight because of their aggregated experience. But that insight needs to be shared because not every consultant can join every engagement. That's why John Hadley, Kline’s director of IT, i...