TelePresence Gains Momentum at Retailer Show

The National Retail Federation (NRF) released its 2010 economic forecast, projecting retail industry sales to increase 2.5 percent from last year. In contrast, total industry retail sales for 2009 had actually declined by 2.5 percent.

"As we continue to see signs of improvement throughout the U.S. economy in 2010, overall sentiment will begin to lift, making way for slight increases in consumer spending," said NRF Chief Economist Rosalind Wells.

While this past year certainly has been a challenging one for most retailers, they continue to seek out ways to apply business technology that helps to transform both their in-store communications and the way they interact and collaborate with their primary suppliers.

Earlier this month, the NRF 2010 "Big Show" attendees were able to once again experience Cisco TelePresence systems and AT&T services in action. The above video includes insights from some of the people who shared their perspective about how business video adoption will positively impact their customer experience and operational productivity.

TelePresence Provides Competitive Edge
"Telepresence gives us something up on the competition, by being able to leverage the expertise that we have in one of our stores, and now use it across an entire region" said David Bash, CIO at Nebraska Furniture Mart, after participating in the AT&T Telepresence Solution demonstration.

To thrive in today's economy, you have to be able to collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers around the globe at a moment's notice. At the same time, you need to conduct your business in such a way that it enhances the quality of your key relationships.

In 2010, we'll likely see more creative applications of visual conferencing technology, as borderless collaboration continues to mainstream across all manufacturing industries and commercial service sectors.

Video Communication Applications in Healthcare

Just as architecture has the power to transform a skyline, create new vistas and reshape the horizon -- so technology has the power to redefine healthcare, that's the theme of this year's HIMSS09 conference and exhibition in Chicago, Illinois this week.

Cisco video technology was featured in the AT&T Telepresence Solution booth on the exhibition floor. Visitors to the live video demo described their perspective on potential new applications, and Wendy Bohling, Senior VP at Magpie Healthcare had a more profound point of view. She said, regarding the business impact, "Telepresence changes and differentiates a hospital."

Quest to Improve the Patient Experience
Enhancing communication capabilities in healthcare can be equated to the potential for productivity and cost-reduction benefits, which are clearly valued. However, perhaps the emerging opportunities will now also focus on patient safety and the overall patient experience.

A recent study, conducted by Zogby International, sheds new light on the heavy toll that communication lapses take on patient care, clinical efficiency and the overall ability of nurses to do their job. More than 250 practicing nurses were surveyed. They included those in medical-surgical, emergency room, operating room, and critical care or intensive care unit service.

The Key Survey Findings Include:

Improving "people-to-people connections" offers the greatest potential for progress. The primary issue centered on the opportunity to improve communications among care team members. The time that nurses spend chasing other people to get answers was twice as great as the time they spend locating other resources.

• When asked how many minutes per shift are typically spent "chasing other people to get answers," up to 86 percent of respondents estimated wasting as much as two hours per shift.
• When asked about information needed to improve communication, 48 percent of nurses surveyed said, "care team availability and location" is most needed from a communications device at the point of care.
• In an open-ended question about the most significant challenge that a nurse's communications device could address, 56 percent of nurses said, "better communication between staff."
• About 60 percent of nurses in the study estimate they work up to 10 hours of overtime each week due to time wasted or lost trying to communicate with other staff.
  

If the visitor comments at the AT&T Telepresence demonstrations are an indication of an emerging trend, then the opportunities for hospital administrators, and other healthcare industry leaders, to apply the latest managed or hosted service offerings certainly looks very promising. Clearly, IT transformation is a rising priority.

Updates:
View the Day Two video of additional demo visitor commentary.
More demo visitor perspectives on the Day Three video coverage.

Small Businesses: Your TelePresence Room Is Ready

Conventional wisdom says TelePresence -- the next-generation video conferencing technology -- is best positioned for enterprise customers with big IT budgets. But through affordable managed services, small businesses are poised to join the TelePresence party.

Fact is, TelePresence can benefit small businesses in many ways. It can allow entrepreneurs to meet virtually with business partners, customers, investors and even job candidates scattered across the globe -- without booking expensive business trips or depending on impersonal conference calls.

TelePresence creates a virtual environment where all participants feel as if they're seated in a single executive conference room. You can read each person's body language. You can maintain eye contact. And you can focus on deep discussions.


Only for Big Enterprises?
Now, for the challenge: The TelePresence industry is gaining momentum within large enterprises that want to improve virtual communications with customers, board members and other key influencers.

However, small business owners are not very familiar with TelePresence. And in many cases, small businesses couldn't afford the upscale conference room designs and back-end IT infrastructure that TelePresence requires.

A Better Option
Of course, entry-level TelePresence systems allow small businesses to get started with high-end video conferencing without breaking their budgets.

Still, there is another option that small businesses should consider: Managed TelePresence services, which are popping up in hotels, airport terminals and other places that involve business travel.

In a typical scenario, many upscale hotels will soon offer TelePresence conference rooms that you will be able to reserve for an hourly fee. Assuming the hotel chain has locations throughout the country and across the world, you'll be able to invite customers, partners and remote employees to participate in TelePresence sessions simply by telling them to drive to a local hotel.

The hotel, working in partnership with a service provider or major Telecom partner, will manage the entire TelePresence experience -- shielding the small business owner from any potential IT complexities.

Why is Google shy about Marratech acquisition?

On the same evening of the record quarterly earnings announcement, preceding a week which included the huge acquisition of DoubleClick (was DoubleClick a Smart Buy?), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) coyly announced the acquisition of Marratech's Video conferencing software on the Official Google Blog under the title: Collaborating with Marratech. No press release. No analyst call. No interviews. Just a simple announcement through a blog post by Google's VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill:

"As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited about acquiring Marratech's video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located."

Why would Google do this? Why buy a company's video conferencing software when you are not going to go all out and talk about it? After all, Google is a key marketing innovator providing an advertising and search platform to tens of thousands of businessess worldwide. Why even put an update on the official blog afterwards that says: "To clarify some confusion, we acquired Marratech's software, not the company itself."

Contrast this particular Google acquisition with Cisco's acquisition of WebEx. Both Marratech and WebEx play in the same web collaboration and web conferencing market place. WebEx has over 2,000 employees; Marratech has 10, albeit a solid engineering team (as per Wikipedia). WebEx has industrial strength proven web conferencing and web collaboration technology used by thousands of corporations; Marratech has good technology that is used by tens of organizations.

For starters, Marratech has good software that include:
* High quality voice for groups with private audio feature
* Interactive group whiteboard including application and document sharing
* Multi party video

and provides support for:
* 256 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) end-to-end encryption
* Support for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on the client and server side.
* Support for bandwidth saving clusters
* Support for IP Unicast, IP Multicast or both
* Support for H.323 (dial in and out, E.164) and SIP
* H.264 video

Here are my top five reasons on why Google chose to acquire Marratech's video conferencing software and did not make a huge splash:

1. Google quite possibly entertained acquiring WebEx Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: WEBX), but did not go over the top as it did with DoubleClick, and essentially gave way to Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO). WebEx would have been a smart play for Google in the enterprise market.
2. Google then decided to simply acquire video conferencing technology that it can essentially mold and embed it deeply within the Enterprise applications and Desktop. Google thus was looking at acquiring technology fast and for a small price.
3. Google will likely integrate Marratech into Google Talk, Chat, Google Apps, Google Desktop, and other Google collaboration products in the future. Marratech may even provide a superior audio solution than what Google has today. Google is only buying the software; it is not clear on whether Google will create a new team of engineers to work on the new solution, or outsource the development to Marratech.
4. Google may provide "Live Video Conferencing" powered by Marratech as an add-on to YouTube customers. This could be huge. YouTube has been a runaway hit with on-demand Video; combine this with live Video conferencing, and suddenly, Google can be powering the world's Video conferencing solution through the Google network.
5. Google will possibly use Marratech as a launchpad in Sweden and create a larger technology presence in the future.