It is one of the hottest products in Cisco's portfolio. If you have a meeting for 12 - 6 people at each location - it is tough to beat the real-life size images on three 65 inch, 1080p plasma resolution screens the Cisco's TelePresence 3000 offering delivers. You can get really fancy with up to 72 participants in a multi-point session with voice-activated switching of participants on the screens. It is starting to make a dent in international business travel. Indeed, this week Al Gore sung praises for its green contribution in cutting air travel carbon.
So is it not premature for me to already talk about disruption?
Well, it costs $ 300K at each location. And expects a high QoS bandwidth of 15 mbps. 150 times more bandwidth than a voice call with stringent SLA metrics in the transport network like one-way network delay of less than 150 milliseconds and packet loss of less than .05 percent. Results in costs $ 12 to 25K a month depending on global location (or may not be available there yet)
Siemens Communications is betting the average company does not need that jumbo solution for all its videoconferencing needs. With its new VHD600 solution that I saw at this week's VoiceCon, it allows you to have up to 2 "good enough" 720p screens, 2 HD cameras - and a high definition speaker phone with a circular array of 16 microphones. So ideal for conference rooms with up to 4 people on each end. It can also display up to 6 voice-activated switching locations (with an external MCU you can increase number of locations displayed even more). For under $ 20,000. You can buy two 55 inch plasma screen at a store for $ 2,500 each (see this graphic comparing where you can tell the difference compared to 1080p). And get away with bandwidth of 5mbps.
So, even with custom furniture and lighting, it would roughly be 20 to 25% of the TCO of the Cisco 3000. Clearly, Cisco has a significant head start and a huge marketing advantage, but for many SMEs and locations of larger companies, this will be a better fit.
Both Cisco and Siemens offer smaller versions of their products. The Cisco 1000 with a single 65 inch screen for a small conference room goes for around $ 80,000. The Siemens VHD400 goes for about $ 15,000 (plus one screen you can buy at the store)
Siemens also offers a personal video endpoint - the VHD100 for $ 6,000 (plus a screen). It will work with 1 mbps bandwidth - so ideal for a work at home employee with Verizon FiOS which supports 2 mbps uplink for under $ 50 a month.
The next wave of high-definition audio and video conferencing is coming to the masses.