Too often it seems I see video conferencing equipment installed in difficult environments. Lighting not being taken into consideration, camera angles that are awkward, too much ambient noise, are three of the more popular items that will sabotage your video conferencing investment.

One of the more exciting product categories to enter the video conferencing mainstream market in the past year is the concept of Telepresence. Telepresence removes several of the variables impacting performance of the video conferencing system. The idea is to provide consumers complete solutions so that when installed on each end of the conference the feeling is like sitting across the table from your counterpart in another part of the world.

Manufacturers have bundled together the displays, furniture, control system, audio system and conferencing hardware into environmental packages complete with specifications for setting up the room for optimal performance. In addition manufactures offer scaled products such as Polycom’s RPX HD 400 series boasting an HD resolution with a 48:9 aspect ratio screen (really wide). The RPX HD 400 addresses Telepresence applications in large venues addressing groups from 8 to 28 participants. Tandberg’s Experia product offers HD telepresence for smaller groups but still delivering the across the table conferencing experience. All the major manufacturers Tandberg, Polycom and Cisco offer products in the Telepresence family addressing basic desktop applications to fully integrated meeting rooms.

So the real question is it worth it to dedicate a specific room in your facility for exclusively Telepresence.

Qty Description Cost
1 Tandberg Experia Telepresence System $199,000.00
1 Customer Core Support and Service 1 Year $18,400.00
1 Installation and configuration and testing $17,460.00
Sub total $234,860.00
Freight $750.00
Tax $13,044.00
Total Estimated acquisition costs $248,654.00
Room Cost per year $1,700.00
Total first year cost $250,354.00


416 Labor Cost Personnel Days @ $350 per Day $145,600.00
208 Travel Expense 550 per trip $114,400.00
Total Cost Travel $260,000.00

This is a very simplistic and very hypothetical example of the acquisition cost and potential first year savings (without cost of capital factored in) based on 4 people meeting once a week and eliminating their travel costs. Essentially you would break even the first room sometime during year one. Assuming you are using this primarily for internal communications between locations you would require two rooms so you would be cash positive on the investment within two years meeting only once per week. As is often the case once these technologies are installed the organizations see increasing usage as personnel find other applications for the technology. One final word on practicality of these solutions the bandwidth considerations associated with these units can be steep a minimum of 8 MB.

Is the technology worth the investment? Only you can make that decision but if you have increasing travel costs and lost time due to employee travel this technology might be worth a look.

Wes

Weston R. Hull

Vice President Director of Sales
Nelson White Systems Inc
whull@nelsonwhite.com

Links

Polycom http://www.polycom.com/usa/en/home/index.html
Tandberg http://www.tandberg.com/
Nelson White Systems http://www.nelsonwhite.com