THERE have been many promises that video technology would eliminate the need to fly halfway around the world to close a business deal.

Those promises have been broken with every video call that had a choppy picture or out-of-sync audio. Moreover it was often hard to tell on a video conference call whether the image appearing at the other end conveyed a strong enough presence to cut a multi million-dollar business deal or delivered a clear enough message to a recalcitrant manager or project team.

Meanwhile, the surge in green awareness increasingly drives companies to seek ways to reduce their carbon footprint, and the promise of reducing air travel emissions has breathed new life into videoconferencing.

Equipment to conduct meetings by video has been around for a couple of decades now, but a new wave of gear is moving videoconferencing closer to delivering on its promise.

Some call it videoconferencing 2.0.

The latest equipment, from vendors such as Cisco, combines high-definition video and audio technology with high-bandwidth networking, all packaged into a professional meeting environment built to stringent lighting, sound and appearance guidelines.

Cisco has rolled out its TelePresence system to its own offices in Sydney and Melbourne and claims the technology has enabled it to reduce its air travel costs by 20 per cent.

The Cisco system is starting to gain traction in other areas, with the ANZ Bank about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to become Australia's first financial institution to roll out TelePresence, linking its headquarters in Melbourne with its offshore facility in Bangalore.

Another starter is Dutch company Maharishi Global Financing, which will install a two-seat TelePresence system at its Adelaide office as part of a global roll out connecting 50 systems across Europe, Asia and North America.

ANZ is planning to install two of Cisco's TP3000 units in the next quarter, creating a system that will allow up to six people at each end to participate in TelePresence meetings.

The main reason for the project is to reduce the use of air travel, thereby cutting greenhouse emissions. The flight from Melbourne to Bangalore takes about 20 hours, including stopovers, but the spokeswoman would not say how many flights ANZ staff used in a month, or how many employees flew.

Dimension Data will be handling the local rollout for Maharishri. Dimension, Cisco's installation partner, helped install TelePresence in its North Sydney and Chatswood offices.

Dimension won't be involved in the ANZ installation, but chief technology officer Gerard Florian says it would cost the bank about $200,000 at each end to install its two TP3000 TelePresence systems.

"There will be implementations that may get over the $250,000 mark, depending on the extra pieces of that fit-out," Florian says.

There are other considerations besides the video technology in setting up a high-quality corporate system. About a third of the cost goes towards ensuring that the sound, lighting and physical environment is up to standard.

"There's a big focus on things like furniture design, matching paint colours, and making sure that air-conditioning systems are dampened to prevent noise filtering through," Florian says.

"All that is important to the outcome. I'd go so far as to say that if you had the bandwidth and the plasma screens but didn't worry about the rooms, you wouldn't get the desired result."

The remaining two thirds of the costs are for the equipment, such as the installation of plasma screens, cameras and a high-bandwidth network to carry the high-definition communications to support PowerPoint presentations.

It's even important to consider the cost of items such furniture. Chairs alone can range in cost from $300 to $1500 each, Florian says. "If you're going to sit in this room for a day and do a strategy meeting, you're going to need comfortable chairs.

"Understanding the customer, such as a large bank's global financing arm, is important. If the user needs to do strategy sessions, or three two-day workshops, they need the proper set-up," Florian says.

Law firm Mallesons doesn't consider the financial and environmental savings of TelePresence sufficient to balance the set-up costs.

"All videoconferencing is built on a business case of travel and in reality it doesn't quite pan out that way," operations and architecture manager Ben Swindale says. "You still have to do a lot of the travel, and TelePresence is used as more of a convenience thing."

Business integration manager Richard Parsons says: "You find there are other benefits in travel and being there, so the amount of travel doesn't actually go down as one might expect or hope".

Mallesons has developed a method of communicating that is much more effective for its purposes, using its videoconferencing system in conjunction with its internet protocol telephony network to connect 3000 employees with functions such as instant messaging, collaboration applications and click-to-call.

"It's about justifying the quite considerable cost of converting our current high-specification videoconferencing arrangement into what would qualify as telepresence, with multiple screens and cameras.

"It's a question of finding enough high-value use that specifically needs that functionality, and at the moment that's not even a question for us," Parsons says.

Ultimately, it's a matter of horses for courses and admits there are some situations that not suited to telepresence, he says.

"There's a question of how familiar you are with audience.

"If you're doing commercial negotiations with people with whom you aren't familiar, telepresence obviously offers a much higher quality presentation with better quality video and audio, and allows you to understand a lot more about those people, but if you're dealing with people you know, with whom you work on regular basis, there's far less value in a video screen that isn't being delivered by the screen that you can get through a telephone."

The legal sector isn't, however, on Florian's list of businesses that Dimension Data is targeting, which includes banking and financial services, education and resources.

"We're not going to advertise to every company in Australia. TelePresence is not appropriate for everybody," Florian says.

"A lot of the universities have invested in their fiber networks, and they see this as a logical extension of their distance education strategy.

"Also, there's the resources sector, where videoconferencing was very popular early on, and executives are sometimes traveling between Perth and Sydney or Melbourne on an almost daily basis," he says.

[via Australian IT]