Seeking to promote the goal of "telepresence everywhere," Cisco
on Tuesday introduced a simplified videoconferencing unit it claims
can be up and running in 15 minutes, along with other improvements
for scalability and interoperability.
The Cisco TelePresence product line faces intensifying
competition from Polycom and others, including relative newcomers
like Vidyo.
Best known for its high-end, immersive systems that are meant to
be placed in custom rooms with good lighting and multiple displays,
Cisco has broadened its telepresence brand to encompass
high-definition video on desktops and smaller units as well. The
new Cisco TelePresence MX 200 is designed for use in offices and
general-purpose conference rooms.
"It will fit into rooms that aren't entirely retrofitted,"
Thomas Wyatt, Cisco's vice president of TelePresence
Infrastructure, said in an interview. Further, the product is
designed for easy assembly and automatic provisioning on the
network "so you can be making your first call in 15 minutes, and it
does not require an AV or IT technician to get it up and running,"
Wyatt said.
The MX 200 will be available in July and has a list price of USD
21,600. With volume discounts, it could wind up being available for
about half that amount, Wyatt said.
Additionally, Cisco is introducing a software upgrade across its
product line designed to facilitate videoconferences with
competitors' products without reliance on a multipoint control unit
(MCU). In videoconferences, MCUs are network devices used to
control multiparty calls, and they also provide transcoding between
video standards. An MCU will still be necessary for calls involving
three or more endpoints, but in the simpler case of a
point-to-point call Cisco is enabling its endpoints to handle the
transcoding themselves.
Wyatt said this reduces the demand on "very expensive MCU
ports," allowing organizations to support more videoconferences on
a more regular basis. It has also been one of the most common
requests from Cisco customers, he said. "This is a big step toward
making video the next voice."
In another effort to boost telepresence scalability, Cisco will
be introducing an infrastructure product called the Cisco
TelePresence Conductor in the second half of 2011. This is a system
for managing reservations across a pool of MCU resources. Cisco
said the Conductor will intelligently assign call requests to the
most appropriate MCU as needed and also provides a facility for
assigning employees virtual meeting room numbers that can be used
to quickly initiate a telepresence session.
Wyatt said the Conductor also improves scalability "from three
participants to thousands" because it can coordinate multiple MCUs
to support a single telepresence session, where traditionally these
sessions were limited to the capacity of a single MCU.