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Shashwat Chaturvedi
MUMBAI: Imagine your CEO sitting at the other end of the table. You can clearly notice the twitch of his facial muscles, his entwined fingers and his crossed legs, when you request him to raise your pay.
Before you could finish, the CEO stands up and gives an impromptu lecture on how employees need to be realistic in these trying times. In the same breadth he highlights all the targets that you missed and all the follies that you did. He does not fail to add a few words on how generous he has been so far with you. With that, he switches off the system at his end and you are left staring at a blank screen. Your CEO was based in the US, and you were pleading your case in India. But how in the world is it possible?
If Cisco has its way, pretty soon this is how video-conferencing is going to evolve and the company even has a fancy name for the product in offing, Telepresence.
Laurent Philonenko, vice president and general manager, Customer Contact Business Unit, Cisco, had recently come down to India on his maiden visit and is highly charged when he speaks about the evolution of video-conferencing ‘as we know it’. But, it was John Chambers, president and CEO, Cisco, who dropped the big bomb in March 2006 at one of the big industry events in the U.S. According to reports, he predicted the launch of the product to take place by the end of the year and the shipping to start by second quarter 2007. The product was named as Telepresence.
While Cisco has a policy of not talking about the products under development, for once Philonenko makes an exception and gives a glimpse of how communications will take place in the future. “Telepresence is a concept that will change way that enterprises and persons will interact in the future. Cisco technology merges high definition video, voice-conferencing system, and high bandwidth IP communications on to a single platform.”
It is certainly not a new idea, way back in 1994, L. Rosenberg had briefly defined telepresence in the following words: "The ultimate goal of these efforts is to produce a transparent link from human to machine; a user interface through which information is passed so naturally between operator and environment that the user achieves a complete sense of presence within the remote site."
According to Philonenko, it goes beyond technology, “the whole look and feel is made to feel like a it’s the same room.” Two separate rooms will have similar furniture that complements each other, high definition video cameras, big screens and high definition audio. “The sound also helps to build the feel in Telepresence. It similar to the Dolby system that one has in theatres, if there is a sound on left-hand side, it reaches your left ear first,” he adds. There have been a few customer trials till now, and “they love it,” is what Philonenko says.
“Video has been around for a while and its usage has not really matched with the projections that were made. But all that could with products like Telepresence,” says Philonenko. He also feels that India is ready for the latest that technology has to offer. “It’s fairly much like what happened with mobile telephony, India did not really have to bother about legacy equipment and could just go in for the latest technology. It could be the same for latest in video communication technology. After all, most of the MNCs have a presence here and they would like to be connected in the best way possible,” he says.
So when will the product be finally released is the question uppermost in anybody’s mind? “We have a policy at Cisco, we always try a product on ourselves first before releasing it in the marketplace. Our CEO has set a target of 20 per cent saving using Telepresence. It would see the light of the day pretty soon,” informs Philonenko.
Somehow, all the talk of this futuristic technology reminds one of USS Spaceship Enterprise commanded by Capt James Kirk in Star Trek episodes aired in the eighties. Philonenko seems to be amused and jokes that, he is working on a project on teleportation. In spite of the jovial way doubts persist, Cisco just might be thinking of sending people across its network, after all, wasn’t an idea like Telepresence just a fancy concept a few decades back. Who knows in the future, “beam me up Scottie,” might just be a reality.
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