With
over 70,000+ internal telepresence meetings, an on-stage telepresence
experience, and the launch of an inter-company telepresence business
strategy, Cisco continues its innovation in the field. Howard Lichtman continues with
the lost "San Diego Sessions," and sits down with Chuck Stucki, General
Manager of the TelePresence Business Unit at Cisco. The two discuss how
telepresence has impacted business effectiveness at Cisco, the ROI of
telepresence, the opportunity for business to business (B2B) commerce
and the coming of telepresence in the home. After the article there is
an update on telepresence at Cisco.

Chuck Stucki, GM of Cisco's TelePresence Business Unit on TelePresence from HSL on Vimeo.

At the time of the interview Cisco had installed about 80 Telepresence Systems globally and had completed about 10,000+ meetings.  In the roughly six months between the time our interview was lost and then found Cisco has added an additional 80+ TelePresence systems to their global network and has conducted an additional 60,000+ internal meetings.  As we reported on Cisco's one year anniversary the network will be growing to 242 internal systems by July of 2008. 

In discussing the improvements to business effectiveness at Cisco Chuck points out that there is no way he could make employees have 10,000 meetings just for the sake of marketing spin. A point brought home succinctly by the additional 60,000 meetings conducted since the interview.  Chuck discusses how potential customers once exposed to the system quickly understand how they would be able to use the technology internally. 

Chuck shares that the internal business case at Cisco showed a complete payback for the company's initial $33 million dollar investment in 110 rooms, network bandwidth, IT support personnel, and network upgrades with just a 5% reduction of business travel. Further, some of the earliest implementations of TelePresence were in Cisco's Executive Briefing Centers and the sales organization's travel reduction has already exceeded 5% and improved the sales force's ability to meet with more customers and potential customers and bring remote subject matter experts into the sales process.

Measuring the ROI
Howard discusses with Chuck the ROI analysis that the Human Productivity Lab has undertaken breaking out the savings into:

Hard Dollar Costs - The cost of airfare, hotel, rental car, & per diem
Soft Dollar Costs - The cost of the executive's time while traveling
And what Howard believes to be the most under-reported cost of physical travel: 
The Opportunity Cost - the loss of what the executive would have been doing if he were not traveling

Chuck agreed with the Lab's ROI analysis and posited a fourth cost savings in the value of being able to huddle a geographically dispersed team on the fly and make immediate decisions vs. waiting days, weeks, or even months to get everyone in the same room. This improved speed of decision making translates into time-to-market advantage... making a sale quicker... getting a product to market faster... getting the right folks in the room to improve the likelihood of a sale or making the right impression with a prospect were all mentioned. 

Improved Attentiveness
Chuck discusses the fact that meeting attendees are more attentive and productive in TelePresence meetings as well.  Speculating that it might be the lighting, the medium, the position of the slides, or a combination, after a year of meetings the improvement in attentiveness has still not worn off.  Howard adds that the improvement in the attentiveness of telepresence is especially pronounced compared to conference calls where many participants are frequently multi-tasking with e-mail or surfing the web.  Chuck agreed and pointed out that the resulting non-answers from distracted attendees will often drag a conference call on even longer. 

Chuck discusses another benefit of telepresence in using the system internally on Cisco's sprawling San Jose campus in the ability to take a meeting to the top of the hour vs. having to scramble to the car and trying to find a parking spot at another building for another meeting.  The ability to immediately meet with someone in another geography was also mentioned making possible meetings that would be impossible in any other circumstance.

Inter-company Communications
Howard and Chuck discuss the potential for inter-company communications with customers, prospects, and joint venture partners.  Chuck posits that because the quality is good enough to use in the sales process it multiplies the potential ROI as follow up meetings and closing meetings can be done without physical travel on either side.  He also shares that supply chain and joint venture partners are driving demand as some have begun to pressure partners to adopt TelePresence to improve their ability to collaborate.  Chuck discusses the challenges of inter-company telepresence especially meeting the InfoSec security requirements of the customers. 

The Future of TelePresence @ Cisco
In probably one of the more fascinating aspects of the interview, Chuck discusses some of the future applications and possible future applications of TelePresence at Cisco.  Howard asks when we can expect to see the ultra high definition Cisco TelePresence CODEC in the Cisco Scientific Atlanta set top box of the future and Chuck confirms that is on the Cisco telepresence technology roadmap.  Chuck and Howard also discuss some of the applications of telepresence to the home:  The Grandma Channel [ Editor's note -"The Grandma Channel" is a phrase that HSL coined in 2007 to illustrate one of the potential applications of telepresence in the home], a telepresence version of MySpace, gaming while connected via telepresence, and the potential of telepresence to the home to become the ultimate YouTube experience where participants are able to "broadcast yourself" lifesize and in ultra high-definition. 

Cisco Update

Since we interviewed Chuck in June, much has been going on with Cisco.  The company reported in September that "TelePresence systems orders grew from the prior quarter by over 300%. In Q4 (ended July 28), the number of TelePresence systems grew by over 400% from Q3".  In November, Cisco partnered with Musion to demonstrate an on-stage telepresence experience.  Chuck Stucki was 'there' along with Cisco's head of Emerging Technologies, Marthin De Beer; both appeared lifesize, on-stage with John Chambers digitally in Bangalore, broadcast from San Jose by the Musion technology.  In December, TelePresence at Cisco turned one-year old and the company announced their 100th customer.  Cisco now has TelePresence Systems in 40 countries and 190 Global Cities.  The company also announced a successful trial with BT of inter-company business communications with standards based videoconferencing.  As mentioned in the article, Cisco has now conducted over 70,000 TelePresence meetings since the launch of their internal network of rooms. In the announcement of Cisco's 100th customer Chuck reported that TelePresence at Cisco is "the fastest-growing new product category in Cisco history."



Other:

Telepresence People

Jaime Thomson, Co-founder and Managing Director at Teliris passed away this week after a long fight with cancer.  The Lab published a memoriam to Jaime here.

Karl Johnson who launched the high resolution encoder VN-MATRIX for Electrosonic last year has been promoted to General Manager - Products and is moving to Dartford, Kent in the UK.

Betsy Boyd has returned to BT Conferencing as Director - Corporate Communications & US Channel Marketing