Cisco New Zealand Unveils TelePresence Solutions

AUCKLAND, New Zealand - May 8, 2008 - Cisco New Zealand today announced the availability of the Cisco® TelePresence 3000. This innovative solution enables virtual meetings to take place in multiple locations, with multiple organisations at one time, decreasing the time required for critical business decisions and reducing the need for expensive business travel.

The Cisco TelePresence Meeting solution makes it possible for colleagues, customers and partners to communicate and collaborate 'face to face' even if they're in different locations all over the world. As a breakthrough technology for remote meetings, the technology integrates advanced audio, high-definition video and interactive elements with the power of the underlying network.

The deployment of Cisco TelePresence in New Zealand follows similar deployments in Australian Cisco offices over the past year, including those in Sydney and Melbourne. Cisco is currentlhy rolling out TelePresence in several other Australian cities.

There are now more than 200 Cisco TelePresence units around the world. Australian customers so far announced publicly are Telstra and ANZ. Cisco TelePresence is helping ANZ reduce travel, lower carbon emissions, and improve productivity and collaborative work practices between its Melbourne and Bangalore facilities.

Geoff Lawrie, Cisco New Zealand country manager, said: "In a country that is geographically isolated, the Cisco TelePresence Meeting solution is set to change the way New Zealand companies meet and collaborate. Customers have been asking for a technology solution to improve critical business relationships and 'in person' collaboration over long distances. This innovative technology will benefit the business that wants to scale globally while reducing operational costs of business travel or that wants to simply and easily increase productivity and decision making across different locations."

The Cisco TelePresence 3000 is designed for large group meetings and provides a boardroom-style table that seats six participants on each side, providing a 'virtual' table for 12 participants in a point-to-point meeting, or up to 72 participants in a multipoint session. The system provides an optimised experience through integrated equipment, including purpose-built office furniture, three 65-inch plasma screens, spatial audio, microphones, lighting, integrated Ethernet and power, and multiple ultra-high-definition codecs and cameras, all of which have been specially tuned to optimise for a large group experience.

Cisco TelePresence uses the standard Internet Protocol (IP) technology deployed in businesses today and runs on an integrated voice, video and data network. The system supports high-quality, real-time voice and video communications using broadband connections. It offers capabilities for ensuring quality of service, a high level of security, reliability, and high availability for high-bandwidth applications such as high-definition video.

Ira Weinstein, analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, based in the United States, said: "The telepresence market has demonstrated exceptional growth in recent quarters. Unlike traditional video conferencing, telepresence provides a lifelike, in-person meeting experience without the need to travel. With 500 units ordered in just 18 months, Cisco TelePresence is certainly the unit sales leader in this fast-growing market segment."

Cisco is also introducing a number of solutions that will create a more collaborative meeting environment, including innovative tools that simplify the way that meeting participants share documents, objects and images over Cisco TelePresence and engage with a virtual agent for customer care. The ability to showcase new products or share presentations in a virtual meeting environment is key to enabling a truly collaborative meeting experience. With the new Cisco Auto-Collaborate capability, meeting participants can easily share files, physical documents and objects over Cisco TelePresence using collaboration tools such as a high-definition document camera or simply by plugging in a laptop computer. This unique Cisco innovation projects images from the most recently activated device to all rooms in the meeting automatically, without user intervention, in a completely plug-and-play fashion.