Telepresence

Telepresence: A hotel-based services options

AT&T is expanding the commitment it’s made to Cisco Telepresence by doubling the number of conference rooms available. AT&T offers a managed conference service based on Cisco’s high-end technology.

The high-end telepresence market has always been dependent on “room-package” solutions like this, according to our research, because only the largest firms can afford and/or justify a private solution. Even the room-package approach isn’t populist enough for the great majority of businesses, however. Among the 3,500 largest enterprises, we calculate about a quarter could justify some in-house facilities and more than 90% of the remainder could use room-based services. In the next tier of the market (5,000 worldwide), only a tenth can justify private facilities, and only 40% can use room-based services.

A broader approach is needed to gain full market acceptance. Our research shows that the most significant shift would be hotel-based conference facilities, because they could be more easily reached because of greater ubiquity. These should also offer lower-cost service than the high-end Cisco approach.

Cisco’s collaboration launch conclusions

Cisco launched its long-awaited collaboration strategy, a move that is not only a giant step and risk for Ciscom, but an indicator of a major disruption in the networking market. Cisco is telling the world that selling bits is not enough, that margins and growth will have to come increasingly from the applications that ride on top of the network and link those bits to consumer or enterprise value.

By making the connection through others, both the sellers of capacity (the network operators) and the sellers of network equipment like Cisco have faced an increasing risk of commoditization and disintermediation. Others have often profited more from investment in networking than those who made it, and Google is the obvious example.

Cisco is apparently wrapping its launch in the mantle of Unified Communications, and in this particular regard we believe they’ve made a mistake. UC is an old concept, and by casting their offerings in the space they’ve both reduced the news impact and magnified the collision with their partners. There are only small chunks of technology that are critical to the collaborative space Cisco covets, and they should be focusing on them more discretely. We’ll have a full look at their launch when it’s public.

Cisco to launch collaboration strategy

Cisco will shortly be launching its collaboration strategy, and will be changing its “Human Network” advertising campaign (a good branding exercise for Cisco) to reflect a more collaborative theme. The Cisco strategy, we believe, will be to link its collaborative and telepresence offerings and social network tools into a corporate service ecosystem that Cisco will provide online as a service and not as a product. This new venture may create some clashes with carrier customers that have their own plans in the area, but we believe Cisco also plans to sell service through carriers, as Microsoft does with its CSF.