As companies become increasingly global, they're using telepresence to drastically cut travel costs and save time.
Today’s high-priced telepresence systems may be out of reach for most, but if industry experts are right, it won’t be long before this revolutionary visual conferencing tool is as much a part of corporate America as coffee mugs and staplers.
With offerings from major players such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Teliris, TANDBERG and Polycom, a telepresence system – replete with life-sized projection technology, spatial audio, high definition cameras and optimized networks – can easily cost upwards of $250,000. It’s a price point aimed directly at deep-pocketed CEOs with a distaste for modern-day travel inconveniences.
But telepresence offers more than simply a hassle-free alternative to delayed flights and security checks. As companies become increasingly global in scale, and gas prices reach unprecedented highs, telepresence promises to drastically cut travel costs while greatly improving productivity.
"Even though telepresence is expensive, it could save executives a half a dozen trips a year, and that’s pretty impressive," said Claire Schooley, a Forrester Research senior analyst.
Establishing a virtual meeting place, however, isn’t the only application of telepresence technology. With its high definition cameras and huge projection screens, systems are also able to illustrate physical characteristics and cues, such as a sweaty brow, in great detail. All of which renders telepresence an ideal vehicle for business negotiations and sales pitches. Then there is telepresence’s potential for allowing human resource executives to interview job candidates from afar while still getting a feeling for an applicant’s personality. In the not-so-far future, it’s likely that telepresence will aid geographically scattered engineers and product managers in the product development process.
Perks aside, there are a few factors currently standing in the way of telepresence’s ongoing evolution. For starters, most telepresence solutions are unable to communicate with one another. As a result of such interoperability, companies are forced to use telepresence on an internal basis only, communicating from branch to branch rather than externally, among suppliers, distributors and customers.
“Interoperability is a big issue in the future in terms of really having telepresence adopted broadly,” said Schooley.
Signifying a step in the right direction, HP and TANDBERG announced an alliance in January to make their respective telepresence and video conferencing portfolios interoperable. As a result, businesspeople will be able to collaborate using everything from the telepresence experience of HP’s Halo Collaboration Studios to TANDBERG’s conference room and desktop-based systems.
Another factor hindering future applications of telepresence is the importance of face-to-face communication. While today’s systems can make you feel as if you’re in the same room as far-away participants, there’s simply no replacing real-life physical proximity.
“A lot of negotiations and high-stakes meetings can be done with telepresence,” says Schooley. “I do think, however, that in the end, you may want to see that person live in front of you to make a final decision.”
That is, until telepresence vendors figure out a way to make a handshake virtual.
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