Cisco Telepresence

Cisco Telepresence 3000 is cool.

I spent a really enjoyable day meeting with Cisco and as part of this seminar we were treated to an overview of the Cisco Telepresence 3000.

You walk into a room which is dominated by three huge plasma screens arranged in a semi circle. Infront of the screens is a table and six chairs with a Cisco IP desktop phone. The room is painted a "poo" brown. - not very nice. When you buy telepresence you buy the room including all the furnishings etc. this means that every telepresence room looks the same so even if you are using telepresence with other companies you still get the feeling that you are around the same table,

You arrange yourself on the very comfortable chairs and the touch screen desk phone has meeting details highlighted on it. You simply touch the meeting details and the three screens come to life and hey-presto you are in a telepresence meeting with Singapore or Tokyo or the Moon.

The quality of the video stream is fantastic. The person in Singapore looks like they are the other side of the desk - there isn't any audio or video lag - quality all the way.

As the presenter in Singapore talked and moved from one side of his room to the other the audio reflects that by changing the way that we hear where the sound is coming from - this is Cisco Intellectual property at work in the speakers.

Behind the screen is a bank of subtle lighting which ensures that the participants faces are always lit up and easy to see. Very important when we realise that a huge amount of our communication is non-verbal.

Integration with all pre-existing video conferencing solutions is available.

It is just a fantastic solution - expensive (US$300k) for sure but worth a look especially if you are an executive who consistently travels long distances.