Video Conferencing Equipment Blog

Cisco CTS 3000 TelePresence System Part II

2010-05-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Baker: Sure, Phil. So I am clearly sitting in the center of the table and some of you are hearing me from that direction the microphone is picking me up accordingly and I am going to go ahead and move to the right side of my table. So if I sit over here, you know you guys on that far side should be hearing me from the right side of your table. Now as I get up and move say to the left side, my voice should be on the room which is very much ambulating what you would hear if someone would have walked behind you during the real meeting or perhaps move around the room. So if I now move over on the left side of the table and your voice on or my voice on your side should be coming from that direction as well. Just kind of maintaining that realism of being in real life face-to-face meeting.

Howard Lichtman: Now this is one of the — when people ask me what is telepresence and what is the difference between video conferencing, it is this attention to details to these subtle nuances of interpersonal communication that create a realism that traditional video conferencing with its, what I call with plastic camera on the TV set just isn't able to — isn't able to replicate. What are some of the other features that you address to create a more as realistic experience as possible?

Phil Marechal: It's a great question. And in fact, there was over 24 patents applied and pending in this technology that we have designed here at Cisco over the last two years. Some of the other things that we did for example, we — you will notice a white trail behind the system. This actually provides horizontal lighting to the face and we actually tune the lights so that you can get very accurate color reproduction of the participants of the clothing that they are wearing and helps that, give you that feeling of emerging. And also you may notice that we do a very small room trimming here. We have actually painted the rooms, identical colors on both sides so that you kind of get this feeling that the rooms are connected. And in fact, the ergonomic design on the system itself down to the shape of the table, which puts all the participants in the correct seating position relative to camera angles as well as the actual visual simulation of the physical table merging into the video image of the table on the far end completes the psychological feeling of connectedness.

We spend a lot of money doing human factors, engineering, design, making sure that we had a product where people came in and just basically had an experience and hand a meeting. We really try to reduce the amount of technology that was in the room. For example, rather than using a complex handheld remote that has 37 buttons and nobody knows how to operate our system is actually converged to Cisco call manager. So as a result, all you have to do is dial a phone number to launch the call or you can schedule it with an email message and in fact the email message appears directly on the phone as a meeting notice and press the button, it automatically launches the call and matches your calendar in Microsoft Exchange.

So as a result, we have looked at ease of use. We have also looked at reliability using call manager and many years of that product being able to be robust industrial quality call, control playing for both audio and video and we have also designed a system in terms of ease of use with power and Ethernet in the table legs, you can plug in your laptop, connect to the network, do work. The system also incorporates a graphics projector into the system so you can display PC graphics and have PC graphics going simultaneously with the video. And then finally, there has been a real effort here at Cisco to you know basically look at how systems like this have what we call, which is kind of a funny name, telepresence moments. For example, recently John Chambers opened a can of pop in a conference room and everybody in the room turned and stared at him just like they would in across the converse table or in one case somebody actually knocked a bottle of water over and it was funny who actually saw the people on the other side jump up like they thought the water was going to hit him.

Howard Lichtman: Or to go get you know a towel and then, "Oh, I am in Singapore."

Cisco CTS 3000 TelePresence System

2010-05-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

Howard Lichtman: Hi, this is Howard Lichtman of the Human Productivity Lab. We are continuing our survey of telepresence in effective visual collaboration. Today we are in San Jose, California at Cisco Systems and we are talking to Phil Marechal, who is the Product Line Manager at the Cisco telepresence business unit for telepresence at Cisco. Phil is going to tell us a little bit about the system that you see in front of us, the Cisco CTS 3000. Phil, thank you for participating with us and pleasure to see you again.

Phil Marechal: Hi, Howard. It's great to see you. Welcome to San Jose.

Howard Lichtman: Thank you.

Phil Marechal: Well, first of all, I would like to say that we are very proud to introduce the CTS 3000, it's been a great success for us here at Cisco. A little bit about the system since people often want to know how it's kind of constructed and built and the first thing we did is we wanted to create a new category that being telepresence or systems that were able to have a lot of human factors, engineering and design around use of the equipment. And in doing that, we have created a system that not only is a place for you to have a virtual meeting where we essentially divide a conference table in half but also a place where you can sit there and literally have a full size perspective of the participants on the far end. For example my colleague here, Jennifer Baker, appears precisely life size on the screen.

So the Cisco CTS 3000 was the first system of its kind of the world to actually retrieve 1080p or true ultra high definition video conferencing, which is a great accomplishment for us and the engineering teams that are here in San Jose. Now the system itself actually has three 65-inch 1080p screens and we use that form factor because it gave us a nice expanse of viewing of the far end participants without crowding in together. Correspondingly, the system also has three 1080p cameras and has three high fidelity CD quality microphones. In fact, one of the nice things about microphones is that we have a GSM filter in it. So if you click your GSM cellphone next to it, it doesn't actually pick up any noise and interfere with your conference.

I would like to have my colleague here, Jennifer Baker, do a quick demonstration of one of the unique characteristics of the system and that's what we call spatial audio. Our system is actually capable of generating up to four simultaneous audio channels. So the people speaking on the left hand side of the room sound like they are coming from the left hand side of the conference room, the center from the center and the right from the right. And we actually converge and mix all these signals simultaneously with Cisco echo cancellation technology to have this great audio experience in addition to this great video experience which is truly immersive life size and life like at a level of resolution of fidelity that's never been achieved before in our industry.

Jen, would you like to do a little demonstration on spatial audio please?

To be continued...

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part IX

2010-03-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Patrick Hodgson: Okay. Hello everybody, my name is Patrick Hodgson, and my apologies you probably heard that the bridge threw me out, but here we are. So Calum thank you very much indeed for that. If people would like, we are into the software now. And so if people would like to expand their view locally, they could see more of the detail of the Video-Miles software.

Now Calum to access this information which is customer information, he has put a username and the password and the secure password which you can change at anytime. So we talked about decision-making information, so we have clicked the mouse, we have gone in, and I can immediately see the catalyst of designing our software all the CO2 emissions I have saved in the metric tons on my video conferencing network.

And you can see the green block grass at the top there, you have got a dual axis, a vertical axis with the thousands of metric tons saved, and the horizontal axis is the relevant period of time. And just below there, you have got the Video-Miles accrued. So the Video-Miles travels on video conferencing. Again the same axis, the vertical is the thousands of miles travelled on video conferencing and the horizontal being the relevant period of time. And of course they match. And the Video-Miles capture allows us to give all the accuracy and the detail that we described on the slide.

On the top right hand side and again I am looking - I am down here, I am taking some mystery out of video conferencing, and I can see the total number of calls on the right-hand side in and out of my video conferencing network, the total Video-Miles accrued of course, the total carbon saved, and the travel cost saved, and the decimal place is in the right place. The registered endpoints for this particular marketing development of the UK, okay it's 16, it could be a 1016. And just below there everybody you will see the periods of time, so you can flip between 2007 Q2, you can have a look at Q1 compared to Q3, Q4 or the year-to-date stuffs, okay. So you can have a look at that and compare how you are doing.

Just below there, you have got the last of dates of when the Video-Miles last recorded the information that you are looking at. And on the bottom right hand side, you have got a pie chart, and in the pie chart you can instantly see the click of the mouse again the contribution by percentage of all my video conferencing equipment around my network. It's kind of coded for ease of access and ease on the eye as well.

Just in the bottom right hand side, we have got the utilization and this is where a lot of the customers are really clicking them out as crazily to have a look at the most utilized as Calum said, that can increase deployments as well, because it is over utilized, people are back trade into travel dollar or push in the travel dollar increasing their overheads again. However, the least utilized, you know people don't have too much resource.

And at the moment, if people want to let's say increase the utilization of video conferencing quite often and some of our customers used to send an e-mail to everybody or send a marketing bulletin to everybody to try and push it. But on this - on the Video-Miles, you can actually drill into a particular endpoint to find out which is not being utilized and even have a look at it.

Calum could we go into the - not looking to offend anybody but can we go into the Montreal office here which has been underutilized in our network. And immediately I can see I have got a Polycom VSX 7000. I know them in the Montreal office, I have got my IP address on the top left hand side, ISDN, if you have
of course we can capture that information as well, and an extension number if relevant as well. But proactively, I have got a contact, I have got a telephone number, and an email address.

So if time zones allow, I can get on to the contact and I can start talking about why it's being under utilized, are people not getting the experience and the values they require in this system, is it a legacy system, what's happening over there. And though we might have had some attrition, we might have had some new people join, and they need some training, okay, they need some video conferencing awareness. But immediately I can do something about it to increase the utilization.

To be continued...

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part VIII

2010-03-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

And we do record all the calls for you and that can vote in a report which I will show in a minute or two, but just some of the variables that we can feature in that. And cost again is one for example the cost per mile is best here in the UK for example, the cost per call or per mile is done and that can be again another variable, they are other granular things that we can change in there for you.

So here is a quick overview of almost a critical network. Really just to give an idea or an indication that we can run multiple Fetchits back to the same Video-Miles login. In most cases, one Fetchit would do one application we will do. But if you do have a dispersed network you may want to be able to - you may want the facility to run multiple Fetchits.

So for example, to some of you at you at home a daily worker or a remote worker has a system that can run the Fetchit from their last conference straight to their endpoint and that can capture the information that endpoint. You may have a name for uses and you may have a remote office that has a couple of systems in it, but they are not connected to the corporate network, you can run a Fetchit it for them, you can help the Fetchit running through the part NAV or the GMA for their management software as well. But from all their endpoints, all the information is captured back into the same Video-Miles login.

Now why did we want to do that? Well too often that within organizations if you are running eight application, any software that we will have to do - the only effect or the appointed to the systems that are actually on the corporate network. So we wanted to capture all the information from all the endpoints and not just 8 percentage of the endpoint, so this gives you an indication of how we can do that.

So the benefits, the video conferencing benefits of the Video-Mile, what do we do? Calculate, measure amount to all the carbon and money saved, we record all the people hour saved between travel, utilization statistics for the entire video conferencing network that we just showed, they are not presented to the network, but the entire video state that you have.

The information to use Video-Miles to find just effective video conferencing strategy, we are seeing this already, we have talked - we have got companies where we are sitting on - taking the Video-Miles onboard and they are using it to stop pushing forward a two, three-year or four-year video conferencing strategy, because they can now monitor and see where the utilization is, files that are not being used, why is it been over utilized or if it is being over utilized grade, can we equip more endpoints in there without doing a travel again, et cetera, et cetera.

Companies are now using in a real estate manner. The same customers come in, we can start targeting, driving and measure and monitoring people locations on utilization becoming maximum savings, and it does know if it is an office that may be underperforming we can start asking the questions why is it underperforming and then start helping and start driving them forward to start using the systems in a more realistic manner.

Again identifying some of the resource, upgrades, new systems are required and increase the deployment of the endpoints in infrastructure, streamlines - or it helps to streamline the video conferencing network that you may have. And again it allows you to budget accurately to upgrade and on new systems just by asking the right questions to the right office where the system has not been used might be there or the system that's been overused. So -

Patrick Hodgson: Calum, it's Patrick. Can you hear me?

Calum Miller: You are back in. Good.

Patrick Hodgson: Yes, I have been back in a little while, my apologies to everybody, because the bridge threw me off. It didn't like me for some reason.

Calum Miller: Yes, I was just going to run into the software here so if you can take -

Patrick Hodgson: Yes, I will crack on with that if you like, Calum. Yes.

Calum Miller: Yes, it's perfect.

To be continued...

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part VII

2010-03-08T18:38:00.000-08:00

So what is the existing data that companies get especially to roll CDR data? So there is a list of calls and the maximum they can get out of that is very basic, it’s the number of meetings held and the number of video minutes their systems have been used. As labor incentives, it’s a team of people to gather time, gather that information, experience any kind of logical piece of data, logical spreadsheet for example for companies to use realistic forms. We take their data – their old data and we put into information.

So a video mile, what is a video mile? One Video-Mile is equal to 1 mile not travelled. So 1 video mile is equal to up a mile not traveled either by road, by air, by both, by helicopter, et cetera, and we do have some weird wonderful stuffs isn’t. So some time ago, middle of last year, we got in talks with Polycom and Bob that you heard earlier on. And we went through authentication, a testing process with them, we then became an arena partner, and then after that we became a stage in Polycom’s green program that you just heard from Charlie. And at the moment as we stand, Polycom they are recommending Video-Miles to their customer base.

So there are a couple of parts to the actual software, to the Video-Miles software. There is – one part is the Fetchit and the second part is the server. So basically the Fetchit is a small application, a small software application that sits on your network and it monitors either your endpoints direct or it can monitor your management software whether it would be GMS or TMS or it can monitor your MCUs whether it be MGCs or the RMXs or your gatekeepers, or your ST-200. If you have an ST-200, it could do either one or it could do all of them. There are no overlapping calls. And so if there is a call going on within an MCU and the Fetchit will extends you on the endpoint, it will take as an overlapping call, it will (seal) after the bridge call and register as a bridge call.

It’s once a day – it’s a schedule – it’s a software, so once a day it will go out to the endpoint or to the infrastructures you mentioned and it will through up the information that’s required and feed it back to the Video-Miles server. Now every 24 hours it sends the data back, that can’t be less, you can schedule that to 24 hours or 60 hours, it’s up to yourself, it can be every 24 hours is okay. And from a midnight kind of systems are reason been used, so it’s not messing any of the calls.

The second part is the Video-Miles server. And it’s a hosted server that the Fetchit feeds all the information back into. So it takes all the real information from the endpoint from the calls and on the calls and from the infrastructure, feeds it back into the Video-Miles server and then the Video-Miles software then analysis it and it can address into the data we will see just shortly.

The information that we present is an environmental information, financial information, utilization and the people hour is saved. And this is showing as we go into the sites in a second, hence we are showing in bar graphs and text and pie chart for them. So some of these will say here we provide key decision-making information back to yourself, so it gives you the ability to take that information and be realistic about your videos saved.

Integrity of the Video-Miles. Again when we first started, we wanted to make sure that the software and the fact that we were building into this were absolutely were accurate, so we teamed up and partnered with the Department for Environment and Food and Rural Affairs. And they are recognizing the state of rural authority and they have set along with the kinds of parts you here in Europe basically set these congressional factors, per mile, per car, per plane, et cetera, et cetera. So we use all their carbon, excuse me, carbon congressional factors as any update conditions come along as we do. We are already talking about for air miles.

For example, Bob mentioned earlier on 3.5 percent. We are looking at adding some kind of multiplier there, because as we know any – from the air miles that’s approximately two planes worse being emitted into the atmosphere than the ground level, so they are looking at that. And when they change that, then we will change. And we will be able to upgrade as we go along.

So we have also mapped the world for actually. So when we talk about Video-Miles, it’s door-to-door not from your office to the airport and the driven mile from the airport to the other airport before mile and from that airport to the far office as the driven mile as well. So the mileage is accurate door-to-door not just on flight, planes, and not building to building. There’s also various – the basic granular is well, so there is a various customer variables we can add in there, and one of them is call payment. So for example, you may say, well, I wouldn’t travel any week for a 20-minute call. So we will record a 20-minute call for you. If you say, okay, we will travel for 45 minutes or longer, okay, we will capture everything in 46 minutes, so a longer – we will design the call for you.

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part VI

2010-03-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

The details of the green assessment is basically three components to this. The first is the definition of the objectives and the project planning stages. We then move into data collection and that’s through a series of interviews and surveys, current carbon emission evaluation, conferencing deployment, conferencing usage profile, and then the employee travel profile and habits. And then with all of that information, we do the analysis, assess the values that can be derived through the data collection, calculate the metrics, deploy recommended plans of action and provide you with a final presentation of all findings and recommendation.

The pricing is available as the product is available is today. If you would like to quote on the Go Green or benchmarking service or the Video-Miles, contact your local office representative or Polycom representative. As part of the announcement today for Earth Day, we are announcing a special offering where if purchased at the same time, a benchmarking service and a Go Green service we take 50 percent off of the Go Green Service, so there is a savings when both are added together. And a services datasheet is available now through your authorized channels as well.

If you wanted to have a clearer picture of the services and what are the deliverable of each, this overview chart provides benchmarking best practice and go green from a value standpoint through the key customer objective where the focuses are and then the desired outcomes that you see. And again these slides are available as the recording will be available to you as well.

So with that, I would like to introduce the third component, and that is the Video-Miles and they are going to tell us about the software application and what its productivity is. So with that I would like to welcome Calum and Patrick.

Calum Miller: Thanks Charlie. That’s great. It’s Calum here, and I will just do this two seconds just get Patrick live again.

Okay, thanks Charlie. As I was saying it’s Calum Miller here from the Visual Environment. We are just going to run through a few slides and then we will go straight into the presentation to demonstration of the actual software.

So this is our vision. When we first started developing Video-Miles, the initial thought was to develop our own – the carbon savings while using video conferencing, but there was more we could build into that. And as we grew the software, the overall vision that was going outside was that we could start empowering video conference users, it’s not driving their video conferencing speed, to get the maximum ROI, to get the maximum utilization, and start reducing their travel.

So we kind of going in developing as we are saying man hour is saved, we have got cost savings, the carbon savings. And through our market research, et cetera, this is what we – everything – all the feedback we were getting apart from the customers was, yes, it is helping us; yes, it is very much has started driving our video conferencing systems forward and making them a proper part of the everyday business.

So what is a Video-Miles solution? Today, the video conferencing users were unable to – in particular I am from the industry ourselves have been unable to access since we have a wide environmental, financial utilization and performance data. We can take that information and turn it into information to give users accurate decisions on their investment on in video conferencing.

There is no existing solution available at the moment to meet this demand at least in these key areas. It is a unique product. We, you know, six months in, seven months in, eight months in we are still getting the same, the same feeling back from everybody that we demonstrated this to and everybody we deal with on this. So the result has been here is that existing users – we see users end up using labor incentives, man hours of trying to analyze their existing data.

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part V

2010-02-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

The green assessment and implementation is a snapshot of how much carbon emissions and expenses are associated with non-video travels and how much carbon reduction there could be if you were to use video conferencing instead of other means of transportation. And then tracking the measurement which you will hear about from Video-Miles is actually putting hard facts, figures and metrics to get usage so that you can substantiate within your company exactly where those savings could come from.

So the value proposition is really looking at video conferencing in a new light as it pertains to helping organization be more conscious for the environment. As Bob had said, Polycom feels very strongly that conferencing is in and out itself a green technology. And with our products and services, we can help our customers get faster and better to the endpoints that they wanted, try to achieve with going green initiative. And organizations can no longer ignore the role in addressing environmental issues and climate changes. And failure to become green potentially in the future can hurt organizations financially. We think that in the not-to-distant future, there is going to be some regulatory activity around carbon emissions and therefore reduction of and potentially financial impacts if certain levels aren’t met within given timeframe.

Many organizations today already have the technology in place to help them go green and that’s where a green assessment would do beneficial to help identify and to know exactly how to use that technology to gain the most carbon reduction and expense savings. So from a markets requirement standpoint, Bob did touch on quite a bit of that. So we will just skip over this as we talk about helping our customers gain a working knowledge of their environmental responsibility and that is becoming more and more important as we talk with more of our client base green initiatives is moving very quickly to the top of the list of areas that they have for internal priorities and programs.

Bob has talked about a lot of the driving forces and we are going to show you with Video-Miles how you can actually determine the measurements. The opportunity to identify practical approaches for improvement while understanding environmental benefits of conferencing and collaborations to help pull it all together, and establish the relationship between environmental benefit and the business benefit, so it’s not only a personal activity or endeavor.

From a customer standpoint what we are seeing is the driving forces are the emission reductions and the expense reductions that we talked about. And with the services we help you establish goal setting processing, determine what your current and future emission, carbon emissions, Greenhouse gases would potentially be, identify areas that would give you the greatest reduction opportunity and look at realistic CO2 reduction goals over periods of times whether it will be 5 percent, 10 percent or 15 percent over one, two, three year periods.

And this is growing to the point where we are seeing and we are hearing from customers today that lines of business are actually being given goals for carbon reduction as part of their budgeting process and that they need to meet a certain percentage of reduction in a given amount of time. And those lines of businesses are signing up for that and trying to get proactive where they can and reactive where they need to be.

So let’s take a look at the three services, benchmarking and best practice, the service that we have had in the portfolio for a short period of time. Today’s announcement what we are doing is enhancing that along with adding the Go Green Assessment Service. And as part of today’s announcement, we are also adding the Video-Miles which brings in the tracky and measurement component of the services solution.

So let’s take a look at the performance benchmarking assessment service first. And as I had said, this is a snapshot of people, processes, and procedures. Guiding customers towards realizing substantial continued benefit through the use of their collaboration tool deployed today or recommended new deploy, help customers identify the applications and workflow for video usage, and then provide recommendations to significantly improve conferencing operations. And this is through service quality, operational efficiency and the business benefits.

From a Go Green Assessment perspective, this is really the opportunity to take a look at what is contributing to the CO2 emission and where those expense savings could come from. It’s a sequence and steps to achieve the highest impact, to best utilization of not only the current, but any future collaboration tool and solutions that you maybe looking at for maximizing the CO2 reduction, and establishing baselines for those reductions as we said over time, and having monthly travel related savings.

For addition information related to green technologies, telepresence and HD video conferencing, please call us at 1-800-224-7083 or visit us online at www.ivci.com

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part IV

2010-02-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

So the use of collaboration tools, voice and video conferencing is not only benefit to the organization in terms of going green. Certainly use any types of tools benefits the company throughout the entire organization, certainly in workflows and daily workflows of improving productivity and efficiency, encouraging innovation, job performance and competitive advantage. But it flows also down to the employees, to your partners, and ultimately financial metrics. Just talked about reduced cost in carbon, but also financial metrics to help achieve shareholder value and maximize revenue and profitability. Again smart business.

So what is Polycom doing today? It's one thing for us to educate our customers on going green, on Earth Day subjects, on using collaborative tools from Polycom. But what are we doing as a company? And so I wanted to talk a little bit about that today. And we chose Earth Day to announce the fact that we are forming a Green Steering Committee with the goals being three-fold, first of all, to minimize our own environmental impact. It also build products through green processes, that's a big part of our company initiative. It also acts as an influencer in the industry, help other organizations understand what the issues are and reduce their own carbon footprint.

Polycom is also as a company probably one of the most video and voice conferencing enabled companies in the world. And we will continue to use our own technology extensively, and certainly promote our green solutions as an alternative to travel to the industry, to the market and also to you our customers. We will also be introducing a lot of different educational resources to our stakeholders and customers. You will be able to find those on our website through your account manager, who manages your account and other sources at Polycom.

And also again, we are making some big announcements here on Earth Day, April 22nd to reinforce our commitment to environmental sustainability. You are going to hear from Charlie Wiseman here in just a minute that we are announcing a new Going Green with Polycom services methodology, three-step process, and we will be having a set of webinars today like the one that you are listening in on and we will continue to do that leading up until June 5th, which is the UN World Day.

So I would encourage you all will Go Green with Polycom. There is a lot more information to be presented here in this session, certainly take action today as it's everyone's responsibility to become carbon neutral. And if I can be of any assistance, here is my contact information, this is sort of the Polycom Team Green. Brian Gilman works on my team and he is also an excellent resource. So feel free to contact us if we can help you in anyway to get a green initiative kick starter within your company.

So thank you Charlie, I am going to turn it over to you.

Charlie Wiseman: Thank you, Bob, very interesting, good information. Good afternoon, everybody. If you are in a company that is leading edge with the green initiative or if your company is just starting to look at deploying green initiative from the services we are going to talk about this afternoon will help you accelerate your efforts whichever stage you are at.

So with that in mind, let's take a quick poll and everybody feel free to vote and we will share the results. Polls are now open. And can you please select your current stage as Go Green initiative. And we will let the polls open for about 10 more seconds and then we will move on. Good. So as you can see, about a third of the audience in the planning stage, a third are partially implemented, 1 percent is fully implemented, and that's consistent what we are seeing with Europe this morning that hardly anybody is fully implemented and the both are in the planning and partially implemented stage. So thank you for that vote and it does validate the research that we have seen across the industry as well.

So with that let's talk about the Going Green services. So these are the industry's first green service offering. And it designs to help organizations like you plan and optimize video networks as a means to reduce carbon emission. But it's not only the carbon emission, it's also the associated expense saving with that as well. So it's kind of a dual approach. And we use a comprehensive methodology and we will share that in just a minute. And we look at three key areas, the benchmarking and best practice service, which is a people, processes and procedures, how do you deploy video conferencing today, and the usage in deploying in a video conferencing.

To be continued...

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part III

2010-02-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

So what can you our customers do within your companies to start looking to reduce CO2. Well here are some of the top recommended steps that are well known and that we certainly advocate. And at the top of the list would be company culture. I would like to talk about this because I get to speak with lot of our customers on a daily basis about going green. And many of the companies I speak with will say, gee, we are taking a lot of steps, but it doesn’t seem to be really resonating with our employees. Well, you know why, because companies have to bring this into their culture and it has to become a part of daily life at company starting at the top, otherwise we can do all that you want, it’s just won’t happen within the company, because people won’t take it seriously.

Certainly, energy efficient facilities are step that many, many companies are going towards fluorescent light bulbs, putting centers in rooms so that the light is turned out when people exit the room, things like that. Product design, big, big way the companies can start to – manufacturing companies can start to become energy efficient. Build energy savings, processes and designs into your products. Manufacturing processes, obviously, many companies produce products or manufacture a product through processes that puts lots and lots of carbon into our atmosphere and those need to start being certainly being scrutinized.

Another creative area that many companies are doing is in the area of human resources and employee or inter-program, giving employees incentive to be green not only within the company walls, but also at home. For example, many companies are starting to give rebates or incentives to employees who buy fuel efficient cars or hybrid vehicles. Travel policies, obviously a big area where companies can not only reduce their carbon but save the cost of the budget, and here in North America where we are experiencing recession, this is a very, very active and big area where companies are starting to look at cutting costs and carbon out of the budget.

And then of course, we at Polycom, IT leadership, certainly saving power in datacenters through energy efficient blade servers and storage devices, extending the work – the network to your home workers so they don’t even have to get in the car, take a plane is another big area for IT leadership. And then, of course, this last bullet in green, where Polycom sits squarely is in the use of collaboration and content sharing tools such as video and voice conferencing as an alternative to travel.

Voice and video conferencing by nature is a green technology. Certainly it allows global enterprises to connect, share rich communications, collaborate, and share content without any need to travel, you can mean virtually even if your work groups are dispersed around the globe. And not only does it help in terms of going green or having green meetings, but it helps increase the productivity of workers who are meeting from long distances.

This not only substantially reduces carbon footprints, but makes your employees feel like they are contributing to the environment by hosting green meeting. And as you can see there by some of the quotes and clips at the bottom, there are many industry and well-known political figures who agree with us that by using collaborative tools such as video and voice conferencing are a great way of working green.

So our company is buying into this trend, what’s going on out there, what’s happening, we wanted to share some research with you to show you that the trend is clear. This happens to be the results of a research survey that was done by Wayne House Research in August of last year. And what they found is that the trend is quite clear. 33 percent of companies that were surveyed are increasing their using of collaboration tools due to their concerns over the carbon emission prices. Of those survey 28 percent have a carbon emissions policy or had last year and 26 percent said the carbon policy was coming within the next year.

So within the next year or several years we should see a deepening of the understanding of how such tools can be used for helping with their – with companies carbon initiatives. And here are some Polycom customers speaking for themselves, PricewaterhouseCoopers have able to avoid 1.1 million miles of travel or the equivalent of about 200,000 kilograms of carbon through the use of video and voice conferencing. And EDnet customer of ours in the European Union say, not only is it smart for the environment, but it’s also just start business.

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green Part II

2010-02-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen this yet, this is the cover of Time Magazine this week's issue, again getting certainly coverage all over the world and here in North America it's become a big item of discussion. So what are the facts about CO2 and why are people focusing on carbon? Well, it's the largest contributor to the Greenhouse gas effect. Certainly any time you are burning fossil fuels, gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, you are emitting carbon emission. Also, some people don't realize in their homes with their gas appliances like water heater, furnace unit, gas stove top, you are also emitting carbon. And also even in the use of electricity, because most electricity is generated through the burning of fossil fuels either oil or coal.

The other reason carbon gets a lot of attention is this is a very simple single measure benchmark. It's one that people are starting to understand, it represents energy efficiency but also polluting potential. And people are starting to understand the measurement in terms of tons or kilogram. And so let me just give you an example that all these can relate to. The typical car that's driven by each of us on an annual basis contributes about 5 tons of carbon. So that's kind of a benchmark or a measure when you hear the billions and billions of tons of carbon that are being emitted in the atmosphere every single year.

In the United States, well, we are big offenders. In fact, we are number one in the world. We produce 25 percent of the world's total carbon emissions that are being dumped into the atmosphere, so we have got long way to go here in the United States and all over North America. Travel, specifically air travel is one of the fastest contributors. Today it only represents 3.5 percent of the total carbon been emitted, but it's forecasted to increase to 25 percent by the year 2030, that's a staggering number. And that certainly sort of low growing fruit if you will as a way to try to reduce our carbon emissions if you are thinking of your companies or your own green initiatives.

So what's coming down the road in terms of regulations, mandates and incentives. Well, I will be honest with you there is not much happening today. Most of it is still in the talking phase. But if you look at what is being discussed or what action is being taken you can break that into about three different categories that I show here, certainly putting a price on throwing carbon into the sky, encouraging companies to become more energy efficient and investing in research and alternative energy sources.

So in pricing the sky, you will start to hear about cap and trade programs. Perhaps you have heard of the concept carbon credits, very, very similar to cap and trade. And then cap and trade program ceilings are put on your carbon output or your carbon emission. And then companies that come in under that limit can actually gain carbon credit, which can then be sold to worse offending companies. So a price tag more or less is put on compliance and non-compliance, those are at compliance or under, it's credited. Those who are over gets fined or have to pay to come in the compliance. So examples of a cap and trade program would be the probably most publicized Kyoto Protocol. And the goal of the participating companies or countries in the Kyoto Protocol would be to reduce their carbon emissions 5 percent by 2012. The European Union has got more aggressive.

This last January of 2008, they have put a mandate before voting countries to reduce carbon by 20 percent by 2012. And there is actually a bill that will be seen on the US for this spring in the United States by Joe Lieberman and his partner Warner and that is a bill that would act for mandates similar to what the European Union is asking for as well, 20 percent by 2012. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger has got very aggressive in California. He has called mandate A.B. 32 and that calls for 25 percent reduction. So for most of us in the United States and North America, we haven't been hit with these mandates, but believe me, they are coming, so now is the time to starting thinking about how we can become more compliant and help our companies be closer to carbon neutral.

Certainly energy efficiency is also being encouraged, tax credit for energy conversation, new standards on fuel economy like the CAFE standards that are starting to come out on automobiles, mandates on building green products and certainly green building architecture for buildings and new structures. And then one of more creative plans is invariable rate plan where you will start to see certain states and utility companies charging more for energy during peak hours. Obviously we give companies and individuals the incentive to conserve more energy during those peak hours.

Alternative energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear, they all exist today, and they are promising replacements because the rising cost of fossil fuels make them more interesting. However really those alternatives willing to scale up price down before they become practical alternatives, because today even with the rising price of oil, fossil fuel is still a lower cost alternative.

Polycom Video Conferencing Equipment is Green

2010-02-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Going Green With Polycom.

Bob Preston: Thank you, Elizabeth. Hello everybody, this is Bob Preston, I am the Vice President of Solutions Marketing here at Polycom, and I would like to welcome you to our Special Earth Day 2008 Webinar Going Green with Polycom.

Also on the call with me today as joint presenters are Charlie Wiseman with our Global Services Business unit. And he will be telling us about a new green assessment service that was just launched by Polycom today. And two individuals from the company who are partners of Polycom called the Visual Environment, and that would be Patrick Hodgson and Calum Miller. And they will giving us a brief presentation later in the session on a new software utility called Video-Miles which allows users to track their carbon miles and a carbon reduction through their endpoint on their video connection.

So for agenda today what we would like to do is start with a brief overview of the environmental crisis and the agenda what’s going on worldwide. We will also share with you some facts about carbon and why the concern about carbon emissions into the atmosphere. We will also give you a brief review regulations, mandates and incentives that are likely to be occurring in the near future, and what companies can do as well as individuals to reduce their own carbon footprint.

We will also touch on how you think collaborative technologies like those Polycom can help companies reduce their carbon emissions, and then companies are buying into these trends, and our company is really doing it, also what is Polycom doing as a company to go green. And then I will turn it over to Charlie, who will then talk about our Going Green with Polycom services offering. We will see the Video-Miles demonstration, and then we will summarize and take some question and answer at the very end of the session. The whole session should last somewhere between 45 minutes to 50 minutes.

So today is Earth Day, it’s a very interesting day for many people around the world, especially given the Global Warming Crisis. And it is celebrated in North America on every April 22nd and within several other countries around the world. There is actually another day that’s celebrated in other countries called UN World Day, and that’s on June the 5th. And you will see Polycom participate in that as well.

But the purpose of Earth Day and that’s why we decided to do this webinar today is really to inspire awareness and appreciation for the earth’s environment with your friends, fellow employees, with your customers and to exchange ideas on eco initiatives, and that’s what we hope to do today. We really hope to spur some ideas, get people talking about what they can do to reduce their carbon emission, and hopefully it will provide some influence to you our customers.

So the environmental agenda is obviously building a significant amount of awareness and momentum. Certainly, the Global Warming Crisis and the emission of the Greenhouse gases is becoming something you see in the news almost daily. And as a result, more and more companies are trying to go clean, trying to go green. And in many cases for different reasons, certainly stakeholder pressures like your communities, citizens surrounding you in the cities where your companies are located, your employees or even your shareholders. So companies are starting to wakeup that there is a corporate citizen responsibility to changing certainly their culture and individual habits in their company to reduce carbon emission.

To be continued....

Video Conferencing Equipment: TANDBERG Managenent Suite (TMS)

2010-01-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

Without an effective management system, administering your video conferencing equipment network can be challenging. Multiple networks, protocols, devices and growing demand create increasing complexity. Make it all work and deliver the best user experience with the TANDBERG Management Suite. TMS makes it easy to manage and maintain your visual communication network. It's a complete software management tool that meets the needs of both users and administrators.

For the user, a simple web-based interface allows for easy scheduling, co-launching and phone directories. Select participants and rooms from phone directory, choose time and date, select meeting preferences.

TMS provides the capability to schedule large conferences, book recurring meetings and check room availability. Behind the scenes, TMS automatically takes care of the rest, allocates, connects and manages conference resources, and TMS integrates with your Outlook and Lotus Notes.

Through TMS' intuitive user interface, the administrator can manage complex, multi-vendor networks with real-time monitoring, notification, diagnostics and reporting. TMS supports equipment for multiple vendors. As you add equipment, TMS makes managing it all simpler and easier.

Event notification alerts administrator to issues before user even notices a problem. Through TANDBERG's Advanced Ticketing System, administrators can identify problems such as video conferencing equipment configuration errors, device faults and network failures. Reporting lets you track usage and trends.

TMS centralizes information by gathering call detail records, conference records and system events presenting it in an easy to understand graphical format. The Conference Control Center provides real-time visibility for all scheduled, ad hoc, bridged and point-to-point calls.

Co-monitoring includes participant status, event logging and intuitive graphical views while co-control allows you to interact, if necessary, with the active conference.

All of this providing you with complete conference control and information at your fingertips.

Using TMS ensures a reliable network environment, less downtime, less maintenance, more productivity, more performance, increased efficiency and return on investment, satisfied users.

Make the most of your video conferencing equipment with the TANDBERG Management Suite.

To learn more about TANDBERG Management Suite, Telepresence and Video Conferencing Equipment, please visit: http://www.ivci.com/videoconferencing_tandberg.html