Tata Communications introduces first public Telepresence rooms

Tata Communications today announced the simultaneous opening of its first ever public Telepresence rooms in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chenna.

The company says  its Telepresence service, the first ever offering to deliver both private and public Cisco TelePresence rooms to businesses across the world, will enable the company broader ecosystem of connected rooms for enterprises and their partners.

"The usefulness of a Telepresence room increases exponentially with each additional room it is connected to," said Peter Quinlan, director, Telepresence managed services at Tata Communications. "The more people in your community of interest, your supply chain, your customer base who are connected to your Telepresence network, the more effective your collaboration across these groups will be.''

These public Telepresance facilities were established in collaboration with Indian Hotels Company Limited, the owner of the Taj Hotels, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Cisco.

In the first phase, the rooms have been set up at the the Taj Hotels in Mumbai and Bangalore and CII offices in Bangalore and Chennai. The company says it ploans to open Telepresence rooms in Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Boston and London by September 2008, followed by New York.

''Through our unique combined public and private room model, we are bringing our customers access to a unique ''in-person'' experience to enhance their global real-time collaboration,'' said Vinod Kumar, President, global data and mobility Solutions, Tata Communications.

Telepresence provides life-like, high definition conferencing facilities with superior audio, video and environmental qualities to provide a viable alternative to traditional face-to-face meetings. This helps enterprises to bring down travel costs for enterprises substantially, important at a time when global oil prices are at all-time highs.

David Molony, principal analyst at Ovum, says, ''This new flavour of telepresence is an interesting one. Tata Communications distinguishes itself from other flavours of Telepresence by the hosting element of the proposition, reducing the complexity on site and the cost to manage these applications. Equipment costs may still prohibitive for some enterprises, but Tata Communications is bringing a different business case to the table by introducing a hosted service, representing a new option for a more affordable managed telepresence solution.''

Tata Communications' global network and carrier relationships will allow it to expand its Cisco TelePresence interconnections. Tata Communications' Telepresence managed service includes a concierge service that takes care of reservations, scheduling, customer support, monitoring, management, reporting and billing capabilities, making it easy for customers to deploy and manage a highly effective collaboration tool.

Rajesh Chainani, vice president of Service Provider for Cisco India & SAARC, said, "Tata Communications has developed a highly innovative service offering that will add considerable value to its business and that of its customers. The Cisco TelePresence solution will help Tata Communications' clients improve existing business processes, speed time-to-market for developing new products and services, and help scale valuable resources.''

Also, Telepresence contributes towards a company's environmental responsibility, by significantly lowering their overall C02 emissions with the reduction in travel.

Businesses also benefit through enhanced productivity with the improvement in long distance collaboration and decision making.

Tata Communications' offering will not only create a larger network effect of interconnected rooms but also expand the market considerably to small and mid-sized businesses with the public rooms offering. These facilities are available on an hourly pay-per-use basis, and located in central business centers.