Guests Check-in to a TelePresence Suite

The American hospitality industry has suffered from the global economic meltdown. While room rates sank nearly 9 percent for the U.S. hotel industry overall, luxury hotels saw their rates decline more than 16 percent, according to a market study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Was the "frugal consumer" phenomenon to blame? Actually, they're not the main culprit. Business people that chose to travel to meet their customers and suppliers are still not likely budgeted to stay at the pricier hotel properties.

What's a savvy upscale hotelier to do, given this scenario? Follow a customer demand trend that has gained momentum -- where spending has risen, based on a solid ROI justification.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts unveiled its first in-hotel Cisco TelePresence meeting suites with a virtual, interactive meeting spanning across two continents. The W Chicago City Center and Sheraton on the Park Sydney are the first in Starwood's global portfolio to introduce the new meeting facilities.

Borderless Face-to-Face Collaboration in Action
Guests and corporate clients were brought together in a true-to-life meeting setting, despite more than 9,000 miles apart and the 17 hour time difference. Participants in both locations had a seat at the table and were able to meet "face-to-face" -- utilizing ultra-high definition video, superior audio and life-size imagery of all participants.

In June of 2009, Starwood announced a partnership with Tata Communications and plans to build Cisco TelePresence rooms in 10 properties worldwide. In addition to the Chicago and Sydney hotels, two more TelePresence meeting suites will open in the first half of this year -- including the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers and Sheraton Centre Toronto.

Other planned locations include The Westin Los Angeles Airport, with the anticipation to expand the offering to key domestic and international business markets such as Dallas, San Francisco, Brussels, Paris, Hong Kong and Frankfurt. As an industry first, reservations for these TelePresence rooms can be made instantly using the Tata Communications online portal.

"The launch of the new Cisco TelePresence meeting suites at the W Chicago and Sheraton on the Park Sydney is another example of Starwood's commitment to innovation by offering our clients an exciting, new meetings solution that facilitates a 'face-to-face' meeting in the same room regardless of global location," said Christie Hicks, Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Starwood. "We have a great partner in Tata Communications and look forward to continuing opening new meeting facilities throughout our portfolio of hotels around the world."

Latest Video Meeting Technology, On-Demand
Cisco TelePresence provides life-like, high definition, conferencing facilities with superior audio, video and environmental qualities allowing participants to meet their colleagues, customers and business partners across a virtual table. The public facility enables those who don't have a corporate TelePresence room to utilize this new benefit at an affordable per-hour rental rate.

Tata Communications has several operational public rooms in India (Mumbai, Bangalore (x2), Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Gurgaon), UK (London) and USA (Boston), Manila with PLDT in the Philippines and Johannesburg with Neotel in South Africa.

Retailers Upbeat About TelePresence Applications

Companies with extended supply chains frequently need to collaborate with multiple partners -- simultaneously and visually. Yesterday at the National Retail Federation Conference in New York, AT&T and Cisco reminded attendees that they have added multipoint capabilities to their telepresence offering, which AT&T delivers as a managed service.

Attendees visiting AT&T's booth participated in videoconferencing discussions with Cisco employees in San Jose, and expressed confidence that they could apply the teleconferencing capabilities in their business immediately. Collin Cupid of high-end handbags and accessories manufacturer Coach said, "It made you feel like everybody's in the same room."

Sally Curtis of Planet Retail, a market research firm, said, "We can use this in our own context for communicating with customers. It's absolutely real." A couple of executives from United Rentals wanted an installation "yesterday," but were willing to settle for getting the equipment from the show floor. "Can we take that one right now?" asked Michael Ellis.

According to the companies, the AT&T Telepresence Solution works over the AT&T Virtual Private Network transport and provides:

• AT&T-owned Cisco TelePresence equipment
• Visual experience with the simplicity of a phone call
• Installation, monitoring and management of the application
• On-site equipment maintenance and repair, plus remote support
  
• Ability to handle complex, multinational, inter-company communications
• Security and reliability, as well as reduced IT staff requirements and limited impact on existing network applications
• Reduced exposure to technological obsolescence, reduced upfront capital expenditure
  

Global companies with extended supply chains can use telepresence to improve communications and accelerate time-to-market. They can also apply the visual medium to transcend cross-cultural communication hurdles, and thereby improve the speed of decision-making and overall operational efficiency.

Five Ways to Avoid Business Travel Expenses In 2009

Novell has canceled BrainShare. Apple is ending appearances at MacWorld. And thousands of businesses continue to cut their travel budgets for 2009.

I've got some unconventional advice for you: Stay on the road in 2009, and make sure you're meeting face-to-face with your best business prospects and sales leads. I plan to be on the road at least 40 to 50 percent of the time in 2009.

But on the other hand, our business continues to embrace a range of online technologies that drive conversation and collaboration with employees, customers and partners. Here are five options that can enable your business to save money and cut travel costs in 2009.

1. Hosted TelePresence: Yes, TelePresence (next-generation video conferencing) is a great way to drive communications. But building out TelePresence studios (they resemble executive boardrooms for the digital age) can cost $300,000 or more. Lower-end TelePresence solutions can cost about $12,000 and prices continue to fall.

Still, you can avoid the capital costs entirely by embracing hosted TelePresence. Much in the way that some on-premise applications are shifting into the cloud and SaaS (software as a service) model, TelePresence is gaining momentum in a hosted or pay-per-use model.

Take a look at AT&T's work with Cisco Systems, as well as Cisco's efforts to develop Public Rooms TelePresence. Over time, you will see more and more hotels, airports and public gathering places offering TelePresence rooms that you rent by the hour. And increasingly, the back-end services will involve hosted VoIP mixed with TelePresence.

2. Skype: An oldie but a goodie. Although eBay hasn't managed to monitize or fully profit from its Skype acquisition, the Skype platform continues to deliver big cost savings to my own business.

During a recent trip to Australia, I used Skype to make free VoIP calls to friends, family and my business partner in New England. The call quality made it sound as if all participants were down the hall from one another.

However, here's the challenge: To make free skype calls with your fellow employees, your peers also need have Skype accounts. Otherwise, you need to pay to "dial" from Skype to employees' traditional phones. At our business, Skype is a mandatory, cost-saving tool. And we find we communicate with many of our clients in Europe, India and Australia using the Skype platform.

3.WebEx: In February 2007 I visited Cisco Systems for an IT channel briefing. When we got on the subject of Unified Communications, I told Cisco they needed a stronger applications story to help show the power of Unified Communications. "You need an application like WebEx," were my exact words.

Two weeks later -- and by pure coincidence -- Cisco acquired WebEx. Clearly, I believed in WebEx for online meetings and Web conferences even before Cisco opened its wallet.

4. FreeConference.com: A great way to organize free conference calls with internal users or external sources. Many businesses spend thousands of dollars on conference bridges and other group-oriented phone conferences. But Free Conferences pushes the cost out to each dialer. And that cost is typically covered by each dialer's existing long-distance plan.

5. Be A Guest: Before you register for an event, conference or trade show, check in with the conference host to see if they need guest speakers for panels and breakout sessions. Then, see if those event hosts will pick up some -- or all -- of your travel costs.

If you're a dynanic speaker with unique views to share, some conference hosts will tap their own travel budgets to cover your trip expenses. But, pick your spots wisely. Plenty of conferences aren't worth your time, and many conferences will face light attendence in 2009.

Closing the Business Video Communication Gap

According to Matt Cowall at Appia Communications, if you look around the business video communication landscape today, you'll see two extremes in predominant use within the marketplace.

At one end are TelePresence and other highly sophisticated solutions. These are expensive and largely aimed at the enterprise market, but the quality of the video experience is excellent.

At the other end are PC- and Web-based solutions. These products are inexpensive, but often lack the quality and reliability that business users require.

Mid-Market Video Requirements
Somewhere in the middle, SMBs and similar organizations hope for the best of both extremes -- high video quality and reliability at an affordable price.

But a recent convergence of circumstances and next-generation technologies appears to be closing the gap in both directions, fueled by:

• The soaring costs, hassles, and inefficiencies associated with travel
• The slowing of the economy, which puts a premium on doing more with less
• The focus on reducing carbon emissions
• Internet Protocol (IP) technology, which cuts video transport costs, especially in comparison with traditional ISDN services
• New video compression codecs
• The emergence of Video as a Service (VaaS)

The Rise in Virtual Meetings

Case in point: in survey results released last month by the National Business Travel Association, travel buyers from over 320 U.S. companies reported a 57 percent increase in the use of videoconferencing, and 81 percent of those respondents said that the increase is due to a deliberate replacement of travel with video.

Video communication is on the rise, but how will "the middle" fully adopt and employ it? What mix of products and services will meet the demand? It will be fascinating to find out. Maybe next time, we can discuss it face to face.

Opportunities for Advancement in an Economic Downturn

Can the current economic environment actually create an opportunity? Even though the present financial crisis will adversely affect capital investment, the uncertainties are also creating new demand for the application of certain business technology offerings.

"In particular, ICT solutions that shift costs from a capital to variable component, focus on productivity increases and cost reduction, and support organizational restructuring and acquisitions are likely to see growing demand," says Andrew Milroy, ICT director at Frost & Sullivan.

Four Areas of New Demand
This belief that there will be a strategic increase in IT demand is the result of the consulting company's latest global market study.

While their assessment acknowledges some ICT setbacks, it identifies four key areas that are likely to experience heightened demand -- sustainable IT; outsourcing, managed and hosted services; information management tools; and those services that support mergers and acquisitions.

Sustainability initiatives range from server or storage virtualization and low-energy consumption hardware, through to the use of online collaboration tools, thin client technologies and power consumption modeling. Most of these activities have the dual aim of reducing costs, as well as lowering carbon emissions.

An Increase for Online Collaboration
The anticipated reduction in business travel will create a corresponding increase in demand for conferencing tools. These applications will allow more employees to work remotely, further cutting travel costs and emissions. Secure remote access solutions will therefore experience demand.

The need for cost controls and a desire to minimize risks will place greater focus on variable costs, leading to an increase in demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS) and hosted service models.

Frost & Sullivan's research suggests that the hosted model will be adapted to suit a wider range of services -- including storage and unified communications. New opportunities are expected in many areas of managed services -- such as managed handsets, managed network services and leasing services.

Change Creates Abundant Opportunity
In a summary of their findings, Milroy adds, "We believe that there are opportunities for solutions and services that can help organizations to cut costs, change cost structures, or increase productivity."

The lean times ahead of us will foster the environment where all "business as usual" thinking is challenged -- and, rightfully so. Forward-looking leaders will not falter; they will grasp that potential for new sources of advancement and take the appropriate action.

Perhaps all IT and business decision makers must now ask themselves the ultimate question -- is my organization preparing for a purposeful advance, or an unpredictable decline?

Four High-Tech Steps SMBs Should Consider Now

The fiscal fourth quarter has just started. But now is the time for small businesses owners and mid-size business managers to start looking ahead to 2009.

"Cost cutting" is a popular topic during today's uncertain economic times. You can hide in fear and close your wallet. Or you can take these four steps to gain more predictable operating costs -- while driving your business forward.

1. Move to a managed services contract: If you're using an IT consulting firm or solutions provider to maintain your network and PC infrastructure, ask them about so-called "managed services." Many consulting firms now offer flat monthly fees to maintain, protect and optimize business desktops, servers, network infrastructure and applications.

This flat-rate approach will eliminate those "surprise" emergency IT repairs that can throw off your company's monthly budget or hinder cash flow.

If you're not familiar with the managed services, here are some key questions you should ask as you seek information about the industry.

2. Rethink business travel: Notice I'm not suggesting that you eliminate business travel. Face-to-face engagements are still important when meeting new clientele or pitching new business.

But for established business relationships, consider transitioning your face-to-face meetings to the virtual world -- especially if you need to communicate on a global scale. Convene online meetings using WebEx, unified communications and other tools that drive rich discussions. Make sure your business's web site includes a simple instruction page to help all of your employees -- and your customers -- get started with these collaboration tools.

And lead by example: Your top executives should be hosting the collaborative gatherings from time to time.

3. Find Your TelePresence: Conventional wisdom says TelePresence -- a rich, comprehensive video conferencing technology -- is too expensive for small businesses. But that's a misnomer.

For about the price of a one-week business trip, it's now possible to deploy a personal TelePresence system in a central office or a branch office. (In fact, the concept of Personal TelePresence dates back to at least 1994.) Each time a TelePresence system eliminates a business trip, you're essentially pay your company a dividend or freeing up cash for marketing, sales, research and development -- or other revenue-lifting activities.

4. Head for Home: If you still offer company cars to some employees, it might be wiser to invest those corporate dollars in your employees' home offices. Your company will spend less dollars on rising energy costs; employees will eliminate commute times and related expenses; and at home TelePresence and collaboration tools will make staff members far more productive.

I'm not suggesting that you eliminate company cars for your road warriors, top revenue producers and field service experts. But take a look at the numbers -- and ask your employees -- to see if they'd prefer to reduce their travel expenses in return for at-home TelePresence.

Some pundits think that at-home TelePresence won't gain momentum until 2010 or so. I disagree. I think leading-edge users are already making the move. I'll be looking for an in-home TelePresence system myself in the first half of 2009.

You have nearly 10 months of operating expenses to review from 2008. Take a close look to determine how your company is spending its travel dollars. Then, shift a portion of those dollars to collaborative tools.

Your company will gain improved productivity -- while earning a financial dividend -- every month in 2009.