Telepresence Devices Have Accelerated Unified Communications Market

Telepresence refers to a set of technologies that gives a feel that the person we are contacting to is sitting in front of us. Telepresence is not only about the thought and feel that the person you want to contact to is present in front of you, but it is also about the crystal clear sound you hear, real-time HD visual effects like the rolling eyes and changing expressions are the visual effects that enhance the feeling of the one contacted, being there. It is just as if all the persons communicating are sitting across a conference table.

Although, Video conferencing has been around since a while now, but it could not challenge itself for jumpy computer screens, broken speech and slow motion recordings of poorly lit video. There was a dire need of a successor to hold the throne of failing video conferencing. And, finally the perfect amalgam of technology, bandwidth, video and sound has made way for Telepresence experience of converged communications. Telepresence, on integration to video conferencing has fulfilled all the shortcomings of video conferencing.

Today, a wide range of HD enabled video conferencing devices with Telepresence capability are ruling the business telephony market. With the use of such devices, the hassles of travel to remote locations for a meeting can be ignored. With these systems, attending an important meeting anywhere in the world is as simple as walking from your desk to the conference hall, located next to your room. The giant companies can save about million dollars per year in travelling expenses.

Not only this, according to the reports of climate monitoring authorities; air travel has around 8-9% impact on the total climatic changes due to the large figures of air-travelers. And, this has pushed up the overall carbon emissions by 83% since the last 2 decades.

Many companies like polycom, LG and Cisco are in the race for manufacturing the best HD video conferencing systems with Telepresence. Without fearing this fact, the printer and office supply giant Ricoh has recently stepped in the unified communications market with the launch of its video conferencing device with the collaborative efforts of Vidyo. The Unified Communications Video conferencing Device has been named P3000.

The HD video conference systems are portable devices having a built in camera, microphone, speaker and a wireless/wired LAN port. The most significant aspect of these systems is that these are Multi- point conferencing systems.

Flexible camera arm, user- friendly interface and an intuitive control panel are other manufacturer specific features of such devices. They also offer the users with the capability of sharing the documents, photos and videos. A personalized contact list is used to start a conference and add more people to the ongoing conference call.

These conferencing devices have been successful in collaborative business communications across the globe. Hence, these systems have been a great success for unified communications.

The reports are evident that IP Phones, IP-PBXs, Presence/IM Servers, Web Conferencing, and Videoconferencing Infrastructure are the main segments that have demonstrated strong growth in the last year. And, Sales of Room-Based Video Conferencing systems that are used to carry out business meetings exceeded those of PBX sales for the first time. This indicated a shift in the mindset of customers in the unified communications market.