Cisco TelePresence Covers Even Rugged and Remote Areas

Cisco carries on its tradition to empower and extend Cisco telepresense through enterprises allo around the world for any given environment. Cisco’s newest technologies – the new VX Tactical endpoint, ISDN Link and ISDN Gateway – enable Cisco telepresence to possess increased installation flexibility in new sites irrespective of environment or connection choices.

The latest Cisco TelePresence VX Tactical is a rugged mobile endpoint designed for “in-person” meetings with other members of their staff regardless of where they are located in the world. Transferable and ruggedized, the VX Tactical allows the advantages of mobility via a hard case-like form factor which is perfect for deployment in the military, emergency services, oil and gas, and construction environments where field work is regularly a necessity. The VX Tactical has a high-impact plastic shell with an aluminum interior frame to supply you with physical strength, and is developed to be water, sand, chemicals and corrosives resilient. It can be deployed nearly anywhere – in an Army Humvee, a tank, a fire truck, or even on an oil rig – so that, anywhere you can have access to an Internet connection regardless of whether it is IP, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or satellite, you will always have Cisco TelePresence with you.

Talking of flexible connections, there are many regions of the world where ISDN is the only available option, or where connection to outside networks like V.35 is needed. For example, tiny branch locations of banks situated in smaller cities across the world may only have access to ISDN connectivity, which previously used to limit the customers’ options in the Cisco telepresence endpoints they could choose.  This has kept many of Cisco’s clients on the MXP platform – but with the latest Cisco TelePresence ISDN Link, a  small appliance that supplies ISDN and outside network connectivity, Cisco’s clients can upgrade to Cisco’s newest products: Cisco TelePresence EX, MX, SX and C Series endpoints. The ISDN Link is a wonderful companion solution to the Cisco VX Tactical, which is often installed in distant sites where ISDN is the only connection choice available.

While the ISDN Link is utilized for ISDN connectivity with one or two endpoints,  the new ISDN Gateway will act as a network reserve for ISDN connectivity for numerous endpoints. ISDN Gateway puts the last touches on the connectivity for clients with a widely dispersed corporate network. The ISDN Gateway products provide support for all Cisco TelePresence endpoints to empower a collaborative and protected ISDN network for an HD telepresence solution regardless of where the client is located around the globe.

So regardless of who you wish to speak to, where they are situated, whether they use IP or ISDN, you will be always have the ability to connect within seconds and experience HD video.  The solutions continue to provision support for new use cases as Cisco continues to construct the Cisco telepresence technology which brings people together from any location, at all times.

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How to Optimize Your Network for Cisco Telepresence Meetings

Smaller businesses have found many persuasive advantages to utilize video solutions and Cisco telepresence systems in their day-to-day business processes: as a promotion tool, as a point of contact for client support, and as a method of training their staff members. Within the company, Cisco telepresence and its utilization of video technology is achieving traction amongst small companies that wish to have face-to-face meetings without incurring the costs associated with travel. As beneficial as video can be, before you can effectively stream video broadcasts, you have to make sure the basic corporate network can accommodate the extra traffic and increased bandwidth requirements.

Decades of watching TV and movies have acclimatized us to have firm expectations from our video streaming experiences. We expect video to be seamless, uninterrupted and fluid, and the audio must be in flawless synchronization with the video we’re seeing. Unlike the Saturday morning cartoons we used to watch as kids in the ‘80s, we would like mouths to move along with the words being spoken, and we favor smooth motions. We get irritated if the streaming video we are watching fails to look right, and in many scenarios, we give will end up just giving up: We leave the program or we end the meeting short.

The fundamental issue is that the majority of small business corporate networks weren’t designed to provision support for video and Cisco telepresence deployments. Video traffic is extremely bandwidth demanding and can eat up more than its share of data, overpowering a small business corporate network. Think about this example: A solitary video stream eats up between 500 Kbps to 1.2 Mbps, and if it is an HD video stream, it can eat up as much as 4 Mbps to 7 Mbps.

Due to the extreme bandwidth necessary for a Cisco telepresence system deployment, your first task is making sure your corporate network has enough data bandwidth to accomodate streaming video and collaboration applications, like instant messaging. Can your corporate Internet connection accomodate streaming video, or does it produce a network bottleneck? The Cisco TelePresence Callway Line Quality Test Tool can allow you some prior awareness into the video streaming capability of your corporate Internet connection.

Advice for Boosting Your Corporate Network

Even though throwing more data bandwidth at the issue is one method of accommodating video streaming traffic, it’s not the only method of optimizing your corporate network for Cisco telepresence. You can boost your corporate network with a router that has inbuilt support for video streaming services, like the Cisco Small Business RV Series Routers, the Cisco 500 Series Secure Routers, or the Cisco 1900 Series Integrated Services Router.

Viewing entertaining videos on websites like YouTube and Facebook can eat up your corporate network’s data bandwidth, so you need to think about setting limits on network traffic produced by your company employees. You can either specify in your company’s acceptable use policy that staff aren’t supposed to access these websites on your corporate network, or you can add their website URLs to a URL filtering list in your router.

Second, you can use the Quality of Service (QoS) configuration settings on your router to allow video traffic priority over other kinds of traffic, like email, which can absorb some network jitters. And thirdly, check your router for IPSLA (IP service level agreements) configuration settings. Some more cutting-edge smaller business routers, like the Cisco 2900 Series Integrated Services Routers, allow you to set service levels for definite business-important IP applications like video streaming.

Finally, if your Cisco telepresence system doesn’t provide you with a great user experience, it won’t be put in use, and therefore it won’t assist people to meet and cooperate. But using the right Cisco router, your small business can effectively stream video to even the most impatient of viewers.

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Cisco Telepresence is Becoming The New Voice in Business

Bringing Cisco Telepresence to the Whole World

Cisco is fixated on quickening the pace of adoption for Cisco’s telepresence across all assorted industries, and organizations of all shapes and sizes located all over the the globe.  Cisco’s method and emphasis is evidently successful, as we’ve been witness to an explosive trend of global acceptance of Cisco TelePresence and incessant market share growth. We can see this trend in the lately circulated market share reports which prove that Cisco Telepresence is the clear Number One player with a whopping 52% of the video collaboration market share. This jump in Cisco telepresence’s market share underlines Cisco’s capability to extend its technology and knowhow to a wide variety of new clients, including small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). Cisco possesses the requisite wide range of endpoints, deployment models and interoperability to allow the concept of Cisco Telepresence everywhere for everyone to become a reality.  Cisco is witness to a momentous explosion of growth from customers who are new to Cisco telepresence and now understand the value Cisco can bring and the flexibility to meet their distinctive managerial requirements.

Empowering Deeper and More Diversified Installations

Cisco Telepresence users have complete faith in the power of telepresence and are driving even more deeper installations into their organization, taking it from the conference meeting rooms to the desktop. They’re beginning to realize the power of Cisco Telepresence as a transformative force for their organization, and they believe that Cisco has the wherewithal to supply a complete video architecture which scales, enhances asset/resource and bandwidth productivity to help reduce the Total Cost of Operations (TCO).

Many specialists and veterans of the video industry have attested to the fact that there is no other experience as realistic, spontaneous, unified, and accessible as Cisco TelePresence.  I also visualize a certain value to our customers as Cisco offers not just video, but also Cisco telepresence as a component of the unified collaboration architecture which positions people at the core of how they communicate, work and carry out business.  Cisco is striving to make video “The New Voice” by enabling a video call experience as simple and natural as a regular phone call.  I personally think that the recent Tandberg/Cisco assimilation is maybe one of the best acquirements in the industry and now that Cisco has completely integrated, it can deliver on Cisco telepresence like nobody else can and Cisco are well on our way in enabling video to become the new voice for everyone.

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With the Right Installation, Telepresence Will Not Trigger Any Security Alarms

A recent article published in a leading newspaper magazine reminds us, nevertheless, that to securely gather all of the advantages of Cisco telepresence, the government—or any other organization/entity—is required to ensure correct execution of the video technology behind Cisco Telepresence. Clearly, security apprehensions increase when multiple mobile devices connect simultaneously to a Cisco telepresence network.

The aforementioned article recognized the susceptibilities exposed in Cisco telepresence-equipped board and conference rooms, and consequently, on mobile devices, when enterprises and organizations do not install their connections behind a firewall or fail to set up their technology to fulfill their security requirements. Happily, the Cisco Telepresence technology itself is intrinsically secure, with numerous protection measures built into the infrastructure. It turns out to be, then, a case of investing informed Cisco telepresence users to correctly set up their systems.

So what should enterprises and/or organizations like the federal government do? First of all, embracing a solutions-based methodology assists safeguard protection by allowing controlled video traffic to navigate the firewall only to endpoints that exist behind the firewall. Just like an agency would not connect an unsecured PC to the corporate network, it should similarly make sure to secure any video endpoints—including mobile ones. Such a secured set-up retains a singular access point into the corporate network and makes Cisco telepresence simple to deploy and administer.

Government bodies depending on Cisco telepresence can also secure confidential information by correctly organizing their Cisco telepresence networks to adapt to their requirements. For example, agencies handling top-secret issues should screen incoming calls as tightly as possible by deactivating any auto-answering abilities.

Like all technologies, video conferencing and Cisco telepresence are only as protected as the corporate networks on which they are deployed.  The government accepts no risks in installing Cisco telepresence, as long as it installs and configures the technology correctly. Cisco works closely with other manufacturers to stick to industry wide commonly accepted standards and develop protected, user-friendly Cisco telepresence which can guarantee successful installation and provide singularly beneficial Cisco telepresence end user experiences.

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Capitalize on Cisco Telepresence Value for Federal Agencies

One might wonder: Has he really in actuality extended his viewing choices since getting the new system? Hmm … not really. First of all, he is scared of his new remote—it is way too complicated. He also usually finds it to turn the system on.

Those of us who decide to invest in Cisco telepresence do not have to suffer from this technological perplexity. Nor would they wish to miss out on the technology’s advantages, particularly after making such a huge monetary investment. Nevertheless, as a Cisco representative pointed out at their Federal Cisco TelePresence Users Forum, a plethora of Cisco telepresence clients have found it difficult to exploit the potential of their newly deployed systems. They had difficulty reforming their workplace cultures to communities which are able to adopt video as the dominant method of communication.

The Cisco representative spoke about a few of the ways federal agencies can circumvent the hindrances some organizations have faced and inculcate flourishing Cisco telepresence networks inside their offices. His list touched upon the below mentioned stratagems:

1)      Training and Support: Supply all possible agency users with the right tools they will require for success, such as all-inclusive system knowledge and established understanding of the available technological utilities. Deploy support systems and broadcast their accessibility to eradicate any user threats.

2)      Incentivize initial adopters: Encourage Cisco telepresence use all over the agency by recognizing and broadcasting the constructive results experienced by the initial employees to efficaciously utilize the technology.

3)      Enabling a Cisco telepresence-dependent setting: Minimize travel costs and budgets. Deploy HR rules, regulations and policies necessitating some Cisco telepresence use.

4)      Screen, measure, and report: Assess the technology’s performance and communicate successes and prospects.

5)      Remain flexible: Make modifications when required, and seek assistance from technology providers. Don’t allow the system to stop functioning for you when there might be a simple solution to the issue.

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Cisco Telepresence and the Rising of the Cloud

Cisco telepresence fits into your cloud infrastructure no matter in which location or which environment you need it in. According to a recent market survey, “innovation in the videoconferencing domain today is targeted towards enhancing connectivity…via cloud-based solutions and services or new low-cost on-site installation models.”

Attaining added connectivity for Cisco telepresence end users and to invite potential users necessitates vendors to perform on several heads, and these days we’ll assess how our cloud deployments deliver feature-rich proficiencies, scale user numbers rapidly, and aid numerous segments at reasonable cost.

Cisco’s customers want to get up and running in the minimum possible timeframe and many times need to scale users quickly across all their internal departments; interconnecting branch locations and offices, home-workers, global locations, partners and customers everywhere, at any given point in time.

To address these requirements, Cisco has enabled its partners to be able to offer tailored solutions that assimilate with their wider managed service portfolios and deliver end-to-end video-ready cooperation solutions to customers all over the world. Cisco has made this possible via the Cisco TelePresence Exchange (CTX) along with its incorporation with Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) so that partners can administer their customers’ video technology with the same efficacy and efficiency that they administer all cooperation applications. The mixture of CTX and HCS allows Telepresence-as-a-Service as part of a wider collaboration service portfolio, and empowers end users to interconnect numerous sites concurrently and securely cooperate with their ecosystem partners while providing the flexibility to purchase or lease out endpoints and leave the backend technology management to be handled by a partner.

Inside Cisco’s cloud solutions, Cisco telepresence assimilates flawlessly with Cisco’s Unified Communications and conferencing solutions, all of which use a shared architecture and pledge to open standards which allow for a dependable and consistent collaboration experience. This assists in making the addition of added connectivity simple for Cisco’s existing end users.

Cisco also supplies dependable cloud-based video integration for emergent businesses via their public WebEx Cloud. Via WebEx Telepresence, clients get a cost-effective, interoperable video collaboration experience offered as a turnkey solution developed to assist new users to get started rapidly and cost effectively. And investments will be safe if a client makes any changes to another Cisco Collaboration platform due to Cisco’s promise of building on the prevalent industry standards and a shared architecture.

Cloud and “as-a-service” models for Cisco telepresence:

  • Provide feature-rich abilities to assimilate into preexisting user environments and appeal to potential clients looking for a complete solution
  • Quickly scale with your collaboration requirements via common/shared video infrastructure to accommodate more users; and streamline visual collaboration with clients and partners over differentiated networks, devices and applications in a protected manner
  • Extend the spread of Cisco telepresence to companies of all sizes inexpensively
  • Are available as of today from Cisco partners all over the globe

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Cisco TelePresence Delivers the Ultimate Video Experience from the Cloud

Why do enterprises want to use the cloud? It’s simple: The cloud provides for flexible installation models, simple execution, unified assimilation of mobile or other distant users, and scalable video that can grow with the speed of business expansion while making available valuable resources to concentrate on their principal business. Cisco has empowered it’s partners to provide these vital advantages to its users with its cloud-based Cisco telepresence solution, the Cisco TelePresence Exchange System.

However, cloud-based Cisco telepresence can do much more for enterprises, and the time has come to make the most of its potential. Cisco recently announced the exciting integration of the new TelePresence Exchange System 1.1 with the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). This allows partners the chance to provide the most comprehensive collaboration portfolios which provide mobile, virtual, and visual collaboration solutions – including Cisco TelePresence – as – a – Service (TPaaS).

TPaaS empowers partners to customize Cisco telepresence solutions to fit the specific requirements of their clients. The collective power of Cisco TelePresence Exchange and HCS provides the following features and advantages:

  • Rendezvous Conferencing – Partners can set up their clients with personal bridges which provide them with protected and secure Cisco telepresence conferences at any time—no advance booking will be required – and for an omnipresent endpoint portfolio – from immersive conference rooms to softclients. Video can flourish simply throughout the client companies, and partners obtain a super-scalable offering which increases the ROI.
  • Active Meeting Management – Conference hosts can directly, or via the use of a partner concierge service, tailor, adapt and dynamically manage meeting and conference environments.
  • Multitenant Conferencing –Partners can share conferencing infrastructure capacity securely and inexpensively across a wide range of clients to meet the requirements of individual customers via a flexible platform.
  • Capital and Operational Efficiencies – Cisco’s integrated architecture provides full support for a modular approach founded on an open architecture which allows the creation of different collaboration applications and ensures operational efficiency via simplicity of integration with business support systems. Partners can now enhance shared infrastructure and routing while companies integrate new features when and how they make sense.

Cisco’s Cloud solutions are all about enabling multipurpose and smart communication services. The merging of Cisco TelePresence Exchange and HCS enables Cisco’s partners to make the most of the value of the cloud offerings by allowing the full range of communication services together in one solution, and making it even simpler to make use of. At DC Supplies, we are enthusiastic to assist you deliver this to your clients today. Please reach out to us with any queries!

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Cisco Telepresence in The Modern Conference Room – Part 1

Staff members would spend hours, if not days, traveling to the conference room to meet with his or her peers face-to-face.  The conference room would be filled up with staff members sitting down to hammer out the organization’s top steps.

Today’s conference room is vacant. Or at least it’s not quite as full as it used to be a few years back.

Could it be due to the reason that executive teams are holding less face-to-face conferences and meetings? Or is the need for sequestered interactions declining? Do staff members value conferences and meetings less now than 5, 10 or 15 years back?

If anything the reverse scenario is true: staff members wish to meet more frequently but are more physically detached. Staff members want the conference room experience without actually being present in the conference room. Work / life balance (which in my opinion can be referred to simply as “harmony”) has made all of us – staff members included – demand more time at home which implies less time in the conference room.

Modern enterprises have figured out how to provide the conference room experience at any location, at any time.

Conference Room Restructuring leads to advances at Enterprise Level

A leading organization has a matchless conference room which is located at the center of its head office. The multi-purpose conference room is a meeting place for staff members, a place of festivity for staff members completing a 25-year (or more) anniversary (and there are SEVERAL of them which indicates what a great place this company is to work), and even to record a video endorsement regarding modernization in the conference room and beyond:

The enterprise team identifies how the addition of Cisco TelePresence to the conference room has helped:

–          Staff members and management are able to cooperate more efficiently and get face-to-face more quickly

–          Minimize travel times and enhance productivity to better serve its clients. For example, management members which previously used to spend a week or more traveling to different locations can now meet with each location from the conference room, minimizing the days of travel required.

–          Include more strategic people in urgent meetings as evidence, a leading manager at this enterprise states “At the conclusion of a protracted day, no staff member wants to drive an hour each way for an in-person conference meeting. But if they are able to walk into a Cisco TelePresence conference room in their own office right away …they would really value that. We are seeing more office staff members in virtual conferences than we ever saw in our in-house face to face conference meetings.”

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Cisco Telepresence in The Modern Conference Room – Part 2

Before this enterprise’s Cisco TelePresence installation, a conference meeting having 20 executive staff members would have been problematic, if not downright impossible. But via the use of Cisco Telepresence, not only is it conceivable, it is very efficient and also gives substantial cost savings to the enterprise.

The end results are articulately summed up in this statement from the CEO of this enterprise, “We recently held a single Cisco TelePresence conference meeting for 20 executive members to deliberate on an urgent matter. I’m convinced that we were rewarded for our whole Cisco TelePresence investment with the returns from that one conference meeting.”

And while there are fewer members using the enterprise boardroom, efficiency has improved, executive and employee staff member satisfaction is higher, and everybody is spending more time dedicated to their priorities.

 An Enterprise is able to eradicate 20,000 Executive Business Jaunts

When this enterprise was looking for a vigorous solution to take advantage of the accumulated know how of 214,000 staff members globally to enhance their business operations and increase outputs and efficiencies, they agreed that the solution would have to be simple and scalable, hence they selected Cisco TelePresence for this purpose.

At the initiation of the project, the enterprise department selected a few critical conference meetings on which to examine the new Cisco TelePresence solution, including the annual executive board conference meeting. Board members of the staff travel from all around the world to Paris for a 2-hour conference meeting costing the organization a lot of wasted time and unnecessary expense.

The pilot board conference meeting was a great success (to the relief of this enterprise!) A manager at this enterprise enlightened us that, “A few of the early reactions to our Cisco TelePresence systems were initially ‘wow, how can we have this adapted this into our organization? The unadulterated immersive and collaborative response, along with the capability to reach out and interconnect with teams all over the world or on the other side of town is extremely powerful’ It has been seen as a huge advantage by the executives, something instantly accessible and not too costly”

The successes with Cisco TelePresence spreads out beyond the conference room:

–          Reduce travelling incurred costs by €100 million over an extended three-year period by hosting 43,000 conferences and meetings

–          Minimized CO2 emissions by 240,000 metric tons over this same three year timeframe

–          Concurrently enabled staff executives to make improved use of their time by minimizing the quantity of trips for management executives by 20,000

–          Eradicated 15,000 employee business jaunts

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Cisco TelePresence MX Series in a Nutshell – Part 2

In other words, meeting members on screen no longer need to go into PIP mode every time content is shared if you don’t need them too. We sometimes find it infuriating when a slide is pulled up and we need to see the reactions on members faces, but they have suddenly become too small to view! Part of the collaborative advantages of using Cisco Telepresence is to feel like you are sitting in the same room. Happily, the Cisco Telepresence MX series was developed with this important factor in mind. They also have the ‘intelligent proximity’ feature allowing members to see content on their personal devices, including tablets and smartphones, instead of just on the video display screen. Not only does this free up limited screen space so you can view each other, it also lets members go through content at their own pace without disturbing the presentation.

For medium-to-large conference rooms, the Cisco Telepresence MX700 and MX800 are custom-made to specifications like camera height, screen display size and screen resolution, and the audio speaker system. Another great feature of these solutions has to be the studio-like camera work: that is, the dual camera speaker tracking solution. This allows a large and complicated discussion to seem like it’s being done in a professional studio, with multiple cameras tracking each speaker and showing you precisely what you need to view. We think the greatest feature is the speaker tracking capability. It’s going to enhance the user experience, particularly in huge rooms. It is going to revolutionize the ways in which we interact with people.

Cisco’s patented solution enables members to concentrate on their meeting, while the cameras automatically track the speakers wherever they are sitting in the room. The cameras can shadow the speaker, focus on the speaker’s face, and then present the new speaker centered on screen. They also have presets which are fully customizable, so one will capture the room while the other can capture a presenter standing at a whiteboard. With up to eight tabletop microphones connected, everybody can be heard loud and clear, and that is of critical importance during conference calls. The Cisco Telepresence MX Series also comes with the capability to bridge diverse locations without the need for any back end equipment. So you don’t require an elaborate video service in the network to host a four-way conference on the Cisco Telepresence MX200/MX300 and a five-way conference on the Cisco Telepresence MX700/MX800.

The Cisco Telepresence MX Series are also more lighter in weight, have brighter displays, and can fit into modern spaces with their elegant and sophisticated cutting edge design. When paired with the Touch 10 user interface, simplicity of use and an awesome design, the Cisco Telepresence MX Series feels intuitive in use and makes Cisco Telepresence that much better.

For more detailed specs on the MX300 G2 and MX200 G2, take a look here.

For more on the MX700 and MX800, check out this link.

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