Cisco has introduced a new suite of Cisco TelePresence products and applications, bringing the power of in-person collaboration to more users in more locations, and providing businesses with a way to do more with existing video investments. Global organizations, regional branch offices and remote workers will now be able to experience Cisco TelePresence from any conference room environment, standards-based video conferencing session or Web-based video session, including Cisco WebEx online meetings. Supporting this market expansion, Cisco is also delivering Cisco TelePresence for lower bandwidth connections without compromising the high-quality experience.

Cisco has also enhanced its Unified Communications system to enable mobile access, improve video collaboration and extend interoperability across applications and devices such as Cisco WebEx Connect, Cisco TelePresence, Microsoft Office Communicator and the Apple iPhone. The new Cisco Unified Communications solutions streamline workflows, optimize collaboration, accelerate decision-making, and enable collaboration anywhere, on any device and any network.

Extending TelePresence

The Cisco TelePresence System 1300 Series is the first Cisco TelePresence system designed for up to six people in a shared-use meeting room. It uses one screen and three cameras. The Cisco TelePresence system 1300-65 uses a 65-inch plasma screen and is the first in a new series of products that takes advantage of existing conference room tables, providing more flexible deployment options for branch offices and businesses of all sizes.

With Cisco TelePresence Extended Reach, Cisco TelePresence can now run over bandwidth connections as low as 1.5Mbps (T1) in 720p resolution with quality of service (QoS) while preserving the Cisco TelePresence experience. Extended Reach also supports Cisco TelePresence over open Internet connections, such as high-speed FIOS or DOCSIS connections. This capability adds to the existing immersive experience of Cisco TelePresence at 1080p or 720p resolutions.

Cisco TelePresence meetings can include video from any standards-based high-definition videoconferencing system as well as standard-definition video conferencing, WebEx and other desktop video applications like Microsoft Office Communicator. This provides organizations with the ability to scale collaboration, take advantage of existing resources, and continue to provide a simple, immersive experience to Cisco TelePresence users.

All of these new features take advantage of the underlying system components, the power of the underlying network and intercompany Cisco TelePresence capabilities, bringing to reality the strategy of creating a global interconnected Cisco TelePresence network. Cisco TelePresence is Cisco's fastest-growing new product category, with more than 300 customers and 2,000 systems deployed worldwide. Cisco has also installed more than 400 Cisco TelePresence rooms on its own internal network for greater productivity and effective collaboration.

Unified Communications Enhancements

Cisco Unified Communications Desktop Integration is a new extensible unified client services framework that exposes Cisco Unified Communications services — including softphone with mid-call control features, messaging, conferencing, desk phone control and phone presence — and allows them to be integrated within desktop applications. These services enable users to access Cisco communications capabilities within the context of a business process. Cisco Unified Communications Integration for Microsoft Office Communicator illustrates the openness of the new client services framework and allows customers to access simplified and highly secure call control features and other Cisco Unified Communications services. Cisco currently offers similar integration with IBM Lotus Sametime.

With “any to any” video interoperability, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center meetings with Cisco Unified Video Conferencing provide advanced video capabilities for WebEx that enable an experience close to an actual in-person interaction. Any device that can connect to a Cisco Unified Video Conferencing multipoint control unit can now be deployed in a Meeting Center meeting to support immersive experiences such as those enabled by Cisco TelePresence as well as by video conferencing and desktop collaboration applications. The solution increases the number of viewable attendees to 16, lets customers display high-definition video, and adds video controls.