New Pastures

Today's world
has become intricately globalized with the demands and deadlines of
enterprises rising day by day, it has become extremely significant to
have communication tools that can easily add to the business value
and ensure good dividends for the company. The need to connect
anywhere and anytime has spurred the growth of enterprise
collaboration tools. Telepresence, which took videoconferencing to an
entirely new level, has provided a mode of communication that more
often than not, is becoming hot. It is finding an impressive
ubiquitous deployment in public and private sector. Telepresence
solutions have assumed a global flavor with the need for workplaces
across India to be connected. According to the VOICE&DATA
estimates, the audio-video conferencing had an impressive rise of
15.2% during FY 2009-10. The segment in the financial year clocked
'265 crore from '230 crore.

WHY TELEPRESENCE?

The trend that has
been fast moving is from video conferencing to telepresence
solutions. They have come a long way than just being an add-on
interactive mode for the bigger companies. With the penetration
increasing there is a deep realization in the enterprises- public
and private sector-about the utility of TP solutions. The reasons
are not very tough to guess. One of biggest supporters of
telepresence is the fact that it has immensely cut down the traveling
costs. Says Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Cisco India &
Saarc, “Telepresence has proved to be extremely effective in
cutting travel costs for organizations simply because it delivers an
ultra-high definition, face-to-face experience from the employees'
respective workplaces”. The level of readiness, amongst enterprises
at the moment, largely corresponds to the value and RoI that IT
decision makers see in the deployment of telepresence as a result of
which organizations have started to adopt telepresence in a big way.
Solution providers are taking important steps to ensure that
enterprise solutions match not only their requirements but their
budgets as well.

This will allow
widespread adoption of telepresence technology. No one can
underestimate the importanceof opex for an enterprise. Cost saving is
an important exercise for the company. TP solutions are proving to be
pivotal by giving strategic benefits to small as well as the bigger
corporate houses. Two years after implementing its own telepresence
private rooms, Tata Communications as a company saw executive travel
reduce by 39%. Apart from cutting traveling expenditure and saving
capital also is playing a centralized role in enhancing the
productivity level of the employees. Consider this, by the
collaborative tool of telepresence-the decision making mechanism
and co-ordination has become more easy than before. The employees
sitting far and wide can now connect to each other within nano-
econds. This communication has resulted in the better co-ordination
which is leading the companies to discuss, dissect and exchange their
views in an efficient way. TP solutions are being used by enterprises
for various purposes like team meetings, one-onones, international
collaboration, planning and project management, partner
communication, performance reviews, sales call etc.

The best of the
benefits of the telepresencesolution is that it is also 'Green'.
With the increasing responsibility and awareness on the enterprises
part to reduce their carbon footprint, the TP solutions are finding a
strong foothold in the energy-conscious enterprises. As the employees
meet more virtually there is a less of need to spend money on airline
ticket or a tank of gas. Green IT compliance comes inevitably as the
companies opt for the telepresence solutions. With the above
discussed benefits, telepresence solutions are one of the
technologies that are fast penetrating the enterprises.

TECHNOLOGY ADVANTAGES

The telepresence
solutions are primarily made up of video and audio. Both of these
components play a discretionary role in making an immersive
experience by the telepresence solutions. The video quality of the
telepresence solu tions can be compared to the nucleus of the atom.
Video ensures the QoE of the consumers. Telepresence professionals
refer the TP solutions as immersive technologies. Immersive typically
means creation of an environment where the people interacting
virtually feel that they are in the same room. Immersive Telepresence
is designed to simulate reality. It starts as a simple SIP (Session
Initial Protocol) based Internet Protocol phone call from one or more
other numbers. An analysis done by Polycom illustrates that the video
quality can be easily described in terms of the number of vertical
and horizontal pixels displayed on the screen. High Definition screens
are the norm of the telepresence. Motion quality is the
second most important aspect. The fast picture motion is created by
the rapid display of successive images. TP systems generally offer
frame rates of 30 fbs (frames per second).

The high
definition voice that comes with the telepresence solutions is surely
an icing in the cake. A better and streamlined voice clarity has been
one of the reasons for which enterprises have opted for it than the
traditional videocon ferencing solutions. The differentiator is that
HD voice generates frequencies at the high-end of speech that
toll-quality voice cuts off. A detailed study from Polycom
illustrates that wideband voice pushes up the top frequency range
covered by the voice coder-decoders (codec) from about 4 kHz to
something higher, typically 7 khZ but it may go higher to 20 kHz.
That means the VoIP phones supporting HD need more powerful
processing and memory. Explains Minhaj Zia of Cisco, “If the
experience is to emulate a meeting with participants directly in the
room, then the audio must be clear, without noise, intelligible,
echo-free, and of sufficient volume.” Multi-channel audio
(sometimes known as “spatial audio”) can also provide directional
cues as to who is speaking if multiple people are in the room, much
as sounds from people sitting around a table come from different
directions. It is worth mentioning that to have an accurate and the
best sound effect, the intelligently placed speakers play a central
role. A technical asset that the telepresence solutions have is that
they are more secure compared to the other VoIP solutions. The
telepresence experience assures audio and video quality that is par
excellence in a highly secure manner, which is the key to greater
adoption amongst enterprises.

Traditional
videoconferencing has often been compared to telepresence. However TP
solutions score better. One of the 2 major complaints with
traditional videoconferencing is that video calls are too complex to
set up and operate. A second major complaint with traditional
videoconferencing is that connections are unreliable. Either the
calls do not go through or the connections provide poor quality audio
or video, despite the fact that the same connection made 24 hours (or
even 5 minutes) earlier was perfectly fine. Telepresence suppliers
have taken many steps to ensure that their systems deliver a
consistent experience time after time. These include network
assessments to ensure the network traffic is properly engineered to
avoid congestion issues, extensive system moni toring and management
services, high performance managed network services, and call
launching.

Of late, to reach
to the lower-end subscribers and make a universal reach of the
telepresence, the companies have also tied with the tablets. Mobility
in telepresence solutions is gaining opularity day by day. Says
Andrew M Miller, president and CEO, Polycom, “Our key focus is in 2
areas-Cloud and Mobility. We want to take our leading technologies
and provide them at a price point which is attractive for SMBs.”
Polycom's telepresence software is embedded in the Samsung Galaxy
and Motorola Zoom tablet. Customers can not only conduct a video
conference from the tablet, but also join into the company's video
conference from anywhere in the world. So, the innovative approach of
the companies to bring the telepresence solutions into the pockets of
the consumers is all set to revolutionize the TP market as it keeps
gaining acceptability.

EMERGING TREND-TELEPRESENCE ROOMS

In order to reach
to all the segments of the business class, the companies zeroed on
the idea of the telepresence rooms. The customers can have life-like
collaborative experience while they have to shell out less of money.
The public telepresence rooms in India really do get enterprises
excited, since it is the lowest cost, charged by-the-hour way to
access telepresence, and because it allows people to connect with
organizations in places where they may not have a permanent room.
That makes it a great way to get started, or to extend the reach of a
network . It can broadly be divided into 4 parts depending on the way
in which the experience is ensured: Public Telepresence Rooms: Making
the tech_ nology accessible on an hourly charge basis, located in
hotels and business centers within the world's major business
cities. Private Telepresence Rooms: Providing com panies access to
rooms located within a company for employees to connect with
colleagues, customers and partners globally Global Meeting Exchange:
Moving the telepresence experience from a private intracompany
experience to a broader global collaboration tool with the ability to
connect with both public and private rooms located in other
companies, regardless of service provider.

Comprehensive Suite of Managed
Services:

Designed to both
reduce the cost of implementing and operating a telepresence
solution, and to maximize utilization by delivering a premier user
experience Tata Communications launched the world's first public
telepresence rooms in partnership with the Taj Group of Hotels and
Resorts in July 2008. The company has been growing its telepresence
solutions by offering them packages to suit the tastes as per needs
and demands of the various strata of enterprises. Supports Bala
Mahadevan, CEO, Orange Business Services India, “At Orange, we have
already seen a 130% increase in sales of telepresence rooms over the
past 12 months.”

Polycom holds
29.5% market share in video conferencing endpoint and 24% market
share in video conferencing infrastructure in APAC. Neeraj Gill, MD,
Polycom India & Saarc, “Polycom is focused on delivering UC
everywhere. Our strategy has 5 pillars to drive this vision: UC
Innovation, UC Ecosystem, UC Intelligent Core, Cloud-based UC
Solution, and Mobility to cater to the business across the sectors.”

CHALLENGES

Though the TP
solutions have been in vogue, there are also certain limitations that
have been hampering the all-round presence of TP. One of the foremost
roadblocks has been the pricing issue. With the telepresence
solutions still remaining a high-end product, the benefit has not
been able to percolate to the small and medium enterprises. While the
SMEs find it tough to afford the telepresence solutions, the RoI
factor also hinders when they plan to deploy it. Also, there is at
times an issue regarding the bandwidth. For a complete rich and
immersive experience on TP, there is a threshold of bandwidth which
is also required. However the reliability of bandwidth at times goes
for a toss and acts as a hindrance in QoE and QoS.

BETTER AND BRIGHTER

The way in which
telepresence solutions are finding a place in the enterprises, an
increased deployment will be seen in the private and public space.
With the government, healthcare, education, enterprise verticals
rapidly adopting the services, TP have a long way to go. Small and
medium sized enterprises are also going for diversified offerings
which helps the SMEs stay neck-to-neck in competition with the bigger
enterprises. Vendors currently market telepresence systems as
ready-built units, but in the future it is quite likely that newer
business models will emerge from greater involvement with service
providers offering customized immersive systems as a managed service.
This way TP can find a promising uptake as it eliminates the need for
users to invest in hardware and inhouse maintenance skills. An emerging
inevitable business tool—telepresence—thus takes on a whole new
meaning; the idea is bigger than just filling a gap, broader than
making do with a 'no-alternative' forced upon us to fight the
economic slump.