TelePresence and WebEx Unite to Give You the Best of Both Worlds

What is the significance of this unification?With the existence of tens of thousands of Cisco TelePresence endpoints and in excess of 30 million active WebEx solution users, Cisco endeavoured to make B2B video collaboration easier than ever before in the past. By unifying Cisco’s market leading online Web conference solution, WebEx, with the market leading enterprise high-quality video features present in Cisco’s TelePresence solutions Cisco is facilitating an all-in-one meeting with anybody, anywhere, on any hardware device.

Augmented to function with any standards-based video endpoints, Cisco TelePresence and WebEx assists enterprises to widen the reach of video collaboration and streamline the experience for all members.

What can Cisco’s clients expect by this amalgamation of these two powerful collaboration solutions?

I’ve delineated a few advantages below:

  • Simplicity of Use
    • With One Button to Push (OBTP) you can schedule, simply begin and join in a meeting, WebEx users are able to join by clicking on the WebEx link given to them in the meeting invite
    • You can expect a unified and familiar experience irrespective of whether they select to join a meeting using telepresence or WebEx
  • Flexibility
    • You can invite anybody, selecting to utilize TelePresence and or WebEx, based on who is being invited inside their enterprise or outside via a personalized email invitation
    • These conferences can be planned and performed using tools you are used to like Outlook
    • Via Cisco Jabber, users can interconnect using mobile phones or tablet devices
  • Improved Conferencing Experience
    • Via Cisco TelePresence endpoints users are empowered to experience the finest, realistic video to improve the collaboration experience
    • High definition (HD) video with up to 720p resolution amongst Cisco TelePresence endpoints and WebEx providing a premium experience
    • Share content in the most secure manner inside a conference– like applications and desktop content
  • Scalability
    • Enlarge meeting options for enterprises to simply make video collaboration accessible for anybody to be utilized more widely inside and outside of the enterprise
    • Scale face to face communications through the whole business to nurture and facilitate increased collaboration

This announcement further supports Cisco’s vision of pervasive conferencing  and making video technologies as simplified as voice. It’s a result of Cisco’s exertions to amalgamate the greatest and brightest in Cisco’s solution offerings to improve simplicity of use and flexibility.

Click here to find out more about how TelePresence and WebEx are working in tandem to make an environment where people can work together with ease, from any place and from any device.

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Cisco Immersive Telepresence Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Cisco has already shipped their 1,000th IX5000 system, the next-generation immersive telepresence solution. This is the most rapid surge in the history of the immersive subdivision, occurring well inside the first year of the Cisco Telepresence IX5000’s launch. That is no small accomplishment for a product having a mighty $300,000 list price (a price which has remained unchanged since the 2006 launch, despite momentous improvements.)

What marks this milestone and makes it even more thought-provoking is that some experts had forecast the death of the immersive portfolio just a few years back. But Cisco Telepresence has persevered notwithstanding the pessimists. Why? Cisco Telepresence was powered by the same idea Cisco had over 10 years back:  To create a conference table, cut it in half, and put 5,000 miles in between the two meeting tables. And yet, it should still feel like all the meeting participants are present in the same room – life-sized, painlessly, and almost mystically.

Like it was more than ten years back, the consumers of today are enthralled the first time they witness immersive telepresence in action. For internationally dispersed industries, the advantages very rapidly become real. Establishments are fascinated with how it can transform their corporate business. Travel requirement circumvention is an apparent advantage, but the urgency of decision-making, the rapport- and trust-building, and the clout to cooperate over hundreds of miles are the true benefits. This is the motivation behind more than 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies purchasing Cisco Telepresence immersive systems.

During the fall of 2006, Cisco launched the Telepresence immersive subdivision with the CTS 3000 Series. It consisted of three 65-inch displays, stereo quality sound, and high-definition (HD) video all producing an awesome and movie-like experience. Cisco even brought in a famous Hollywood director to ensure the experience would be memorable. It was and still is!

If you fast-forward 10+ years, there are definitely more bells and whistles included with Cisco Telepresence. But the heart of the product has remained unchanged. It is a persuasive collaboration experience that is super spontaneous and dependable.

What has undoubtedly transformed is access, founded on the order of scalar rise in Cisco Telepresence products shipped. Today, the advantages of Cisco Telepresence immersive collaboration can range well outside the boardroom to worldwide project teams. Moreover, who doesn’t like be fascinated while they are getting business done? 🙂

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Cisco TelePresence MX Series in a Nutshell – Part 1

We were forced to custom-construct the rooms, put in place extraordinary lighting and tables, and much more. Each new room required an additional overhead expense. We have to confess, though, the end result was overwhelming. Collaborating with your teams over immersive telepresence, we pretty much overlook the technology behind it after a few minutes, and we are not actually conscious of anything else but being present in the same room with the team members in front of us.

The Cisco TelePresence SX Series allows us take advantage of preexisting, standalone video displays (or standard home High Definition HDTVs) to produce low-cost, high-definition video conferencing endpoints. As there are a large number of rooms in our organization that don’t have preexisting video display screens, we are starting to use the Cisco TelePresence MX Series to create video conferencing in just a couple of minutes, without needing to rearrange and restructure a complete conference room from scratch. Not just that, but the Cisco Telepresence MX Series utilizes less bandwidth, so it is a comparatively inexpensive to support. The Cisco Telepresence MX Series is ideal for business startups, small to medium sized businesses, and people just starting out with video and hoping to save expenditures in locations where internet bandwidth is costly: Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia are good examples of regions with expensive bandwidth. But it also is ideal for large companies that need to install broadly all over their companies.  Cisco’s talented IT teams are in process of accomplishing just that, adding to their videoconference proficiencies worldwide at a decreased cost.

The Cisco Telepresence MX Series are incorporated systems which have their own dedicated video screens. The Cisco Telepresence MX200 and MX300 are extremely simple to use, put in place and deploy for small-to-medium sized rooms. You can take it from box to call in as little as 10 minutes, but I’ve seen people do it in less than five minutes. The Cisco Telepresence MX700 and MX800 are larger and higher performance solutions – giving high definition (HD) audio and video experiences for medium-to-large sized rooms. They are lightweight considering their size, but you will still need help getting them out of the box, configuring and setting them up.

As an end user, we like how the Cisco Telepresence MX systems look so visually pleasing, and just like other Cisco telepresence hardware, they are still extremely simple to use. Being an IT person, I must appreciate the plug-and-play facility. Once you have planned out where you would like to put everything, and after you have done it a few times, it only requires around 10 minutes to set up the Cisco Telepresence MX200 or MX300 units. There is still a bit of planning involved: it is a lot like configuring a good entertainment system. You need to think about having windows and access to bright light in the room, and position the monitor to minimize glare. You must place the microphones in close proximity to where staff will be seated but far enough from each other to avoid interference. You are advised to place the speakers in a location where attendees will have access to the best sound quality. And when you are done setting it up, the video and sound quality is extremely impressive.

There is a bit more to it than all this though. For the optimal experience, you should set up the system preferences and settings for the audio equipment and cameras/visual apparatus, network connections, and security. The good news is that there is a simple web user interface to utilize and also some helpful user documentation that comes along with the system and walks you through it. Once you have done it yourself a couple of times, it comes quite easily.

The display screens are all high definition (HD) and are available from 42-inch to 70-inch options, so the Cisco Telepresence MX Series can accommodate just about any room or conference meeting size.

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