Telepresence technology costs
July 6th, 2008 | by Adam LuckingThe take up rate of telepresence in the serviced office industry has been extremely slow, mainly down to the huge cost involved.
The major contenders are Polycom, Tandberg, Cisco and HP and all of which have found it incredibly difficult to sell the new technology in large numbers. This is not down to the quality of the technology. There are high definition images and high quality sound on offer and it is set to change the way businesses communicate with each other.
As the technology is so advanced there is a reluctance to reduce costs, but rumour has it that HP are thinking of cutting their prices. Really, telepresence as a product needs more PR to increase awareness and demand.
Ideally once people learn the benefits of telepresence they will push serviced office providers to invest more into this new technology. The advantages of videoconferencing on time saving, costs and productivity are outstanding and telepresence will give this and much more to boot.
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By Tim W on Jul 8, 2008 | Reply
Interesting point and there is plenty happening in this area right now. My only reservation is that interoperability (and lack of standards) is probably a bigger barrier to adoption then cost.
While most of the systems will talk to a standard video-conference unit, the real benefit is lost without the whizz-bang kit at both ends (immersive screen, telepresence camera etc.) I would expect operators with dedicated conferencing facilities to be the first movers as and when it makes economic sense although without interoperability guarantees in place it feels like too much too soon for now.
As operators shake down their IT and communications infrastructure and start to roll out new services, I personally feel that they will be able to make a stronger proposition to cost-conscious clients by focusing on services that don’t enforce hardware dependencies. In particular I am thinking of web-based services that provide multi-media conferencing and collaboration; or web-ex type conferencing.