Video Conferencing Review

Cisco announced an expansion of its Cisco Motion vision with five strategic areas to help businesses thrive through the power of collaboration. The new ‘Collaboration in Motion’ approach builds on the Cisco Motion vision by helping to ensure that every person in every workspace receives the best mobility experience to connect, communicate and collaborate.

As part of Collaboration in Motion, Cisco is announcing new products and services in five investment areas - devices, wireless network platform, applications, technology partners and professional services - that work together to deliver connectivity for a collaborative experience anytime, anywhere.

“Together, the transformational power of collaboration combined with the power of the network as the platform can enable businesses to thrive,” said Talha Jarad, Business Development manager for information Security, Cisco Saudi Arabia. “Evolving modern businesses are comprised of workspaces that are rarely physically connected and critical business information is collected and shared with mobile devices such as laptops and smart phones. Cisco’s approach with Collaboration in Motion harnesses the power of the network to continually connect the devices to the network, to people and to systems, to collaborate in a borderless organisation,” he added.

Among the new services being offered by Cisco under Collaboration in Motion is the new Cisco Compatible Extension Services program. This modularises features into certain services; foundation, management, collaboration and context-aware. Utilising this approach allows manufacturers to select only the service that is relevant for their specific device. The program establishes the benchmark for enterprise Wi-Fi connectivity and simplifies the process of device certification for manufacturers, while lowering the operational impact of connecting and managing wireless products for Cisco customers. A broad ecosystem of silicon vendors and device manufacturers support the program evolution, including Atheros, Broadcom, Ekahau, Intel, Intermec, Nokia, Summit DataCom, Redpine Signals, Spectralink/Polycom and Texas Instruments.

Another offering from the ICT market leader is the Cisco WebEx Meeting Center application for use with the iPhone. With this technology, users can view what’s being shared, see the meeting participant list, watch the active speaker and chat with other participants to fully collaborate with partners, customers and colleagues anywhere around the world. The new release of the Cisco WebEx meetings iPhone application, which is available for free download from the AppStore, allows the host to schedule meetings and invite attendees before and during the meeting using the iPhone. Apple is another of the host of technology companies working in supportive collaboration with Cisco’s new ventures, with Intel being one that is playing an important role in wireless laptop applications.

“As wireless has become the standard for pervasive access to business critical applications, Intel continues to work closely with Cisco by enabling Cisco Compatible Extensions across the latest generation of laptops based on Intel Centrino 2 processor technology,” said Alexander Quach, Intel’s director of wireless marketing. “Combining Cisco Compatible Extensions with Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology provides the foundation for robust mobile services by offering superior wireless security, reliability, and performance, ensuring consistent delivery of business applications,” he added.

Courtesy of: www.wirelessdevnet.com

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Author: Paul Korzeniowski

Smart phones provide users with quick and easy access to simple applications, such as e-mail and calendaring. Now, thanks to Cisco, these devices are capable of synching up live video chats–and that means more freedom for mobile entrepreneurs.

Via Cisco’s WebEx conferencing line, users can run conferencing applications, launched via Web browsers, on Nokia, Research In Motion and Samsung smart phones. The audio and Web conferences can run over 3G or Wi-Fi networks. While companies pay to hold these conferences, there are no additional charges to hook smart phones into them.

Cisco had announced similar capabilities via a standalone application for Apple’s iPhone in January. However, that device has been used mainly by consumers and is not yet a typical productivity tool for executives at small and midsize businesses. The support for the new devices, especially RIM’s BlackBerrys, should open up new communications possibilities to mobile executives. Employees who are on the road visiting customers or suppliers will be able to dial into Web conferences live rather than being forced to download a copy of these events later in the day. This new capability should help streamline company communications and improve productivity.

There are caveats, of course. New capabilities do present small and mid-size businesses with new challenges. To date, Cisco is not supporting Microsoft’s  Windows Mobile systems, which have been quite popular among business users. Competitive pressures could play a role in Cisco’s reasoning. The vendor and Microsoft have recently become more direct competitors in the unified communications–and therefore conferencing–space. Consequently, Cisco may not want to endorse one of its competitor’s technologies.

One would think that, eventually, Cisco would open up WebEx to Windows Mobile, but when that will occur and how functional that capability will be is unclear at the moment.

Also, small and mid-size businesses will need to put some more monitoring functions in place. To date, cellphones have come into many companies in an ad hoc manner.

Employees purchased the devices and then hooked them up to the network, often without asking permission from the IT department. Consequently, the necessary security functions are often not in place. Small and mid-size businesses will need to first gain a better understanding of how many of these devices are now on their networks. Then they’ll have to make sure that these products have the proper security items, such as encryption, in place, so problems don’t arise if a smart phone is lost or stolen. This work may be tedious and time consuming, but it’s also necessary.

The influx of conferencing systems also could put additional strain on corporate networks. These applications usually include live audio, the downloading of complex PowerPoint presentations and sometimes live video. Consequently, they’ll need a significant amount of bandwidth, something that businesses may not have at their disposal. Therefore, supporting these new applications may require that companies upgrade their corporate networks, something that may be hard to justify in the current economic climate.

Increasingly, mobile devices are becoming a mechanism that employees rely on to access and share corporate data. These systems offer companies a great many conveniences, but they also present them with new significant challenges. Small and mid-size businesses need to make sure that they can balance those two often-conflicting needs as the use of mobile devices increases in the future.

Courtesy of: www.alibaba.com

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AT&T works with local service providers to offer fully managed services to enable new way to collaborate and drive business productivity

AT&T* has commenced provisioning of the industry -leading AT&T Telepresence Solution in China, a fully-managed solution enabled by Cisco TelePresence. In collaboration with local service providers, the solution allows companies in China to connect to their customers, suppliers and partners worldwide in a highly cost-effective way while also reducing environmental impacts.

The availability of AT&T Telepresence Solution in China is part of AT&T’s recently announced US$1 billion planned global network and portfolio investment for 2009 and extends the availability of the service to 25 countries globally. AT&T Telepresence Solution delivers an immersive “in-person” experience with the simplicity of making a phone call. AT&T Telepresence Solution also offers unique multipoint functionality and reliable inter-company capabilities, which allow multiple locations within and between companies to connect to each other.

“China is one of the fastest growing and most exciting telecom markets in the world and we plan to continue to invest in and strengthen our services in the country,” said Sainti Li, AT&T Greater China general manager. “The availability of AT&T Telepresence Solution in collaboration with local service providers further enhances our robust portfolio of IP-based communications services in China. We are committed to providing customers with leading-edge solutions to help them improve productivity and collaboration in these challenging times.”

The availability of AT&T Telepresence Solution in China is AT&T’s latest milestone in expanding its Telepresence offering. AT&T recently announced a new feature that will allow companies to connect their existing videoconferencing systems to AT&T Telepresence Solution. By the end of 2Q 2009, companies will be able to connect their existing H.323 compatible legacy videoconferencing systems with their AT&T Telepresence Solution rooms, offering a cost-effective solution to leverage historically under-utilized systems. With this new feature for intra-company conferencing, existing SD (standard definition) or Internet Protocol-based videoconferencing systems will participate as an end-point when a Telepresence session begins.

AT&T also recently announced 2009 plans to double the number of its own AT&T Telepresence Solution rooms worldwide to 50.

The AT&T Telepresence Solution provides AT&T-owned or customer owned Cisco TelePresence equipment, installation, full monitoring and management of the application, remote help desk service and on-site equipment maintenance and repair and works over AT&T Virtual Private Network transport. Three-screen and one-screen site options are available, based on the Cisco TelePresence System 3200, Cisco TelePresence System 3000, Cisco TelePresence System 1300, Cisco TelePresence System 1000 and Cisco TelePresence.

Courtesy of: www.redorbit.com

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By Nathesh, TMCnet Contributor

Tandberg has stated that its newly released Tandberg (News - Alert) Compliance Appliance (TCA) is a high volume, always on, compliant recording solution that enables organizations to archive video calls and easily identify content for compliance and auditing purposes.

Tandberg is a provider of telepresence, high-definition video conferencing and mobile video products and services with dual headquarters in New York and Norway.

Company officials said that the TCA solution was designed specifically for addressing risk management and compliance requirements in Finance, Legal/Courts, Education and Healthcare fields which often deal with sensitive customer interactions. The solution simplifies the process of documenting video conversations for organizations.

Analysts have stated that TCA is the first integrated video recording product available to meet large scale needs of organizations to archive video calls and easily identify content for compliance and auditing purposes. The TCA can effortlessly document and archive video files that are consistent with similar processes for other forms of communications to help ensure regulatory compliance.

Tandberg has stated that the Compliance Appliance is the result of significant worldwide research on recording regulations as well as the archiving and accessing needs of companies.

Key features of the TCA are it is scalable and reliable – designed to meet massive recording needs with scale and redundancy in mind; it is built with a flexible configuration – complied with local and international regulations while meeting unique corporate network requirements. It also offers seamless, transparent recording of all video meetings required to be recorded for compliance purposes; and all recordings are stored via SMB/CIFS to external storage.

Video conferences can be easily identified and retrieved by using the TCA. If calls are recorded then users are prompted by the TCA with automatic announcements. The solution can record up to 50 High Definition 720p30 resolution point-to-point calls at 1MB simultaneously.

Fredrik Halvorsen, the CEO of Tandberg commented that while companies are turning to video conferencing and telepresence solutions to make more informed and faster decisions and to reduce travel time and costs they also have to be on watch for regulations. Tandberg’s Compliance Appliance enables customers to fully experience the benefits of video while alleviating their concerns over regulatory recording requirements.

Courtesy of: www.tmcnet.com

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Examining the feasibility and effectiveness of doctor-patient interaction through videoconferencing, a study has shown that such virtual doctor visits are similar to face-to-face visits on most measures.

“There is growing evidence that the use of videoconferencing in the medical environment is useful for a variety of acute and chronic issues.

Videoconferencing between a provider and patients allows for the evaluation of many issues that may not require an office visit and can be achieved in a shorter time,” says Dr. Ronald F. Dixon, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the study’s senior author.

In America, telemedicine projects are being examined to evaluate their capacity to improve patient access to care and lower healthcare costs.

During the current study, the researchers randomised patients to one of two arms.

In the first arm, the patients completed a visit-either virtual or face-to-face-with a physician, and later completed a second visit via the other modality with another physician.

In the second arm of the study, the subjects had both visits face-to-face with two different physicians.

All of the doctors and patients involved completed evaluation questionnaires after each visit.

The researchers observed that the patients found virtual visits similar to face-to-face meetings on most measures, including time spent with the physician, ease of interaction and personal aspects of the interaction.

The doctors in the study were also found to score virtual visits similar to face-to-face visits on measures like history taking and medication dispensing.

Though the physicians appeared less satisfied on measures of clinical skill and overall satisfaction, the ratings they gave to virtual visits were still in the good to excellent range.

The diagnostic agreement between physicians was 84 percent between face-to-face and virtual visits; it was 80 percent between the two face-to-face visits.

“The tradition of medicine is to lay hands on the patients, which has always been considered paramount to patient care in the minds of physicians. However, these findings suggest that virtual visits could be a viable option in circumstances where patients need to be monitored routinely for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, obesity or depression, and where self-management strategies are not working. Virtual visits may also be effective for triage of acute, non-urgent issues like back pain or respiratory infections,” says Dixon.

Based on their observations, the researchers came to the conclusion that both patients and physicians could benefit if virtual visits were used as an alternative method of accessing primary care.

The study has been reported in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare.

Courtesy of: www.newstrackindia.com

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