Not Telepresence, OmniPresence

There is a lot of confusion out there about Telepresence. What is it? How can it help my company? Why is it so expensive? What is the return on investment? These are just a few of the questions I hear from customers every day. For me the answer is simple. Telepresence is a high end AV Integration that deals in human factors like eye contact. The technology should be hidden or immersed. It needs to be easy to use and most importantly it needs to be reliable. 

When we talk about reliability it is not just the equipment that you need to consider it is the video conferencing network infrastructure. What bandwidth is needed? Do you have QoS on your network? What about interoperability with your other systems. A design discussion needs to take place prior to any Telepresence deployment. There are solutions that will require more bandwidth than others. That is a cost that needs to be considered.

Finally, it is important to understand what your application is and how a Telepresence solution will help your company have a virtual meeting at a distance. For example, if you have executives meeting and collaborating around a table than a custom Telepresence solution is the right choice. If your doing training with an instructor at the front of the room or your company uses this room for a number of different types of meetings than this may not be a good fit. A dedicated room or rooms that are dedicated to only doing Telepresence meetings is the optimal way to go. 

Filed under: AV Integration, Video Conference HD