Friday, 17 October 2008

New Cisco Rental TelePresence Rooms Aim to Reduce Carbon Emission

Cisco, with the aid of Tata Communications, has unveiled telepresence rooms available for public use in a move that seeks to encourage companies to cut traveling costs and curb carbon emissions in the process.

The Cisco TelePresence rooms will allow companies and individuals to rent a room at an hourly rate that starts at 299 dollars and can go as high as 899 dollars.

The rooms come fully equipped with conferencing facilities including audio and video technologies, allowing participants to meet their colleagues, customers and business partners across a virtual table.

Cisco said its key market will be small and mid-sized business. Other services provided will include concierge service such as reservations, scheduling, customer support, monitoring, management, reporting and billing.

The first phase of public rooms was launched in India in July at the Taj Hotels in Mumbai and Bangalore, and CII offices in Bangalore and Chennai and has now been extended to Taj Hotels in New York, Boston and London.

"Public Cisco TelePresence rooms provide global organisations with a cost-effective way to connect in virtual 'in person' meetings with key customers, partners and suppliers around the globe. Our objective was to collaborate with a company to launch a unique Cisco TelePresence solution that was innovative, yet reliable and cost effective for businesses whatever their size," said Cisco Chief Globalisation Officer, Wim Elfrink.

"Working with Tata Communications offers customers extensive coverage in a user-friendly managed service, and has the potential to help small to medium businesses develop more globalised business models."

In a statement released, Tata also revealed plans to open additional rooms in Hyderabad, Gurgaon, and New York later this year, with a more extensive global rollout of 100 rooms planned to be deployed by 2009.