Telepresence at turning point for the channel

Frost & Sullivan research suggests opportunities are burgeoning for service providers and systems integrators

Cisco's enterprise-scale TelePresence offering helped spark off the market globally

In April, ash plumes vomited skywards by one hitherto unremarkable Icelandic volcano grounded planes and stranded passengers all over the world.

A new series of in-depth interviews by market analyst Frost & Sullivan suggests that eruption disruption is but one factor helping to move telepresence up the priority list for large and high-value businesses.

Dominic Dodd, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said that although the recession had dampened telepresence and videoconferencing adoption, it had also helped refocus business minds on cost control and return on investment (RoI).

“It is an overused phrase, the ‘perfect storm’, but what we have is the need there and the network infrastructure is now in place – and a couple of years ago it wasn’t. The network was still not really reliable for long-distance, end to end calls. So it is about all those things coming together,” he said.

Telepresence started to emerge in 2005 when Cisco launched its offering, Dodd said.

That vendor went on to launch a sophisticated, large-scale ‘TelePresence’ solution in 2007 that was beyond the budgets of nearly all but the largest and most profitable multinationals.

Dodd said interest had gone on rising. Also, there were now increased sales in immersive telepresence, especially as rapid development in the capabilities of videoconferencing systems and Internet Protocol (IP) networks over the last three years had seeded solution diversification.

Game changing
“Products like LifeSize are really changing the game, with quality improving and prices getting lower. So some of the challenges will disappear, there,” he said. “There are products now more for just two or three participants, using beamsplitter technology based on the ‘tinted glass’ concept.”

HD too was coming down to a lower price point.

Smaller but high-value firms – in verticals such as legal or financial services, for example – are increasingly seeking telepresence offerings, both in-house and as a fully-managed service, that will help them communicate globally more effectively, Dodd said.

“I suspect a number of the companies in these spaces can put it down to executive wear-and-tear. Rather than them having to spend a month flying, they can do it by telepresence,” he said.

Frost & Sullivan’s “Telepresence Global Market” report estimates the market for visual collaboration end-points – including customisable telepresence component kits supplied by resellers as well as ready-made ‘traditional’ telepresence room solutions -- as growing from $396.2 million in 2009 to $825.9 million by 2015.

The immersive-user experience, furthermore, represents opportunities to layer specific offerings such as security offerings, or back-end and email integration– opening up yet more profitable chances for systems integrators, ISVs, and services providers to enter the market, he said.

Frost & Sullivan spoke primarily to partners for the report, going beyond bluechip names such as AT&T, BT and IBM to companies such as BCS Global, and smaller systems integrators and other IT partners.

“We spoke to a lot of companies in the IT space, Cisco Gold Partners, people like that, and people maybe getting into these types of services for the first time,” Dodd said.

“And all the feedback was very strongly positive. Obviously you have to take what you hear with a certain pinch of salt, but there was a consistent view that [telepresence] is a good opportunity to get into.”

Businesses worldwide are reassessing their involvement with visual collaboration offerings generally – including video telephony, videoconferencing, and telepresence – as ways to reduce opex and boost productivity as the technology became more effective and reliable.

“The volcano ash clouds from Iceland are just the latest in a long line of issues that have impacted business travel,” Dodd said.

And while the UK was a more mature telepresence market than some others, this did not mean that opportunities were about to dry up. There was still room for more players, he added.

All forms of visual collaboration would slowly be integrated into the wider unified communications space. And while the bandwidth often still isn’t there, it is improving and may prove acceptable in locations where telepresence would have been unfeasible just a few years ago. That said, buyers would proceed cautiously, Dodd added.

“While telepresence can uniquely offer a number of attractive customer benefits, there are concerns about the cost and availability of the network required to support it, and also
how effectively it may work with other parts of a customer’s video estates,” he said.

Cisco completed its buy-out of videoconferencing rival Tandberg in April, and is working on an industry-wide Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), with code scheduled for public release 1 July.

Marthin de Beers, senior vice president of emerging technologies at Cisco, said in a statement: “We strongly believe that telepresence – along with our entire rich collaboration portfolio, powers this new way of working where everyone, everywhere, can be more productive through the pervasive use of video and face-to-face collaboration.”

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