TORONTO, Ontario - June 1, 2007 - Cisco today announced Rogers Communications, Canada's leading diversified cable, telecommunications, media and information services company, has selected the Cisco® TelePresence Meeting solution to improve productivity and collaboration between its offices across Canada.
Rogers is the first Canadian-based TelePresence customer. Launched in late 2006, TelePresence is a ground-breaking category of products that combine advanced audio, true high-definition video and interactive elements to create unique, "in-person" experiences between people, places and events.
With TelePresence, Rogers employees will be able to communicate with each other across the country as if they were meeting in the same room, improving collaboration, sharing documents more efficiently, and raising productivity while reducing travel costs and environmental impact.
"Rogers has always been an innovator in the deployment of leading-edge technology," said Edward S. Rogers, president and CEO of Rogers Communications. "We are particularly excited about the opportunities TelePresence presents to improve the way we communicate and collaborate internally and with our customers, partners and shareholders. Using TelePresence will enable us to increase productivity while reducing travel."
Rogers will deploy four Cisco TelePresence System 3000 suites in its Toronto headquarters, Brampton, Montreal and Vancouver locations. Each System 3000 unit comprises a three-panel 65-inch plasma screen complete with a specially designed table that seats six participants on one side, or a "virtual table" for 12. It supports life-size images, ultra-high-definition video and spatial audio capabilities. The Cisco TelePresence System 3000 also includes codecs, cameras, a lighting array, microphones, and speakers, all of which are specially tuned to optimize the experience. A meeting is started just like placing a phone call and can be scheduled simply through a group calendar.
"TelePresence is a next-generation technology that shows how Internet Protocol-based communications can significantly transform business processes," said Terry Walsh, president of Cisco Canada. "By choosing to deploy this solution, Rogers is using its network investment in Cisco Unified Communications and continuing to demonstrate its technology leadership, along with its commitment to meeting its environmental and carbon reduction goals."
The Cisco TelePresence Meeting solution is an integral component of Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA). This framework helps enterprises evolve their existing communications infrastructure into an intelligent information network. Within the SONA framework, Cisco offers real-time collaborative applications such as voice and video that feature quality-of-service, security and high availability and operate on a single integrated network.
