Gartner has released its latest Hype Cycle Research Report: Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2008. Of the 27 technologies they list as “emerging” over the next few years, Green IT, Video TelePresence and Cloud Computing are at the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” and should be adopted, according to Gartner, in 2-5 years. Hype Cycle for 2008. If you compare the Hype Cycle for 2008 with that of 2007, you can see that TelePresence is making its way through the
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | September 15th, 2008 | Filed under Innovation, Video Conferencing
George Colony, the CEO of Forrester Research (and NOT the actor…), recently wrote a post on his blog about the Pros and Cons of using Telepresence for long-distance business meetings instead of traveling. Colony’s team, located in Massachusetts, met with John Chamber’s team, located in California, all using Cisco Telepresence rooms. Colony says “the experience is a close emulation of an in-person meeting. If in-person is 100% and traditional video conferencing is 40%, the attendees put TelePresence at 80%”.
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | September 11th, 2008 | Filed under Video Conferencing
No one can deny the big buzz over telepresence. But hype or revolution, it seems that telepresence vendors are focused mainly on increasing the sales of their high-end systems rather than interconnecting them to allow for cross-vendor conferencing. According to Glowpoint’s CEO Michael Brandofino, leading telepresence vendors are putting it off saying “we’ll deal with it later”, but seriously endanger the reputation of the entire technology. Cisco and HP, two of the biggest telepresence vendors, have been working with partners
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | August 21st, 2008 | Filed under Interoperability, Telepresence
I have been recently out of the office for two weeks on reserve duty service. Going (back) to the army always brings with it mixed emotions, but one of the things I do look forward to is getting updated with the recent technological advances in army infrastructure, especially in VoIP. Just recently the Israeli Defense Ministry announced a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a massive tender to re-deploy a brand new telephony infrastructure, including 100,000 new end-stations, all based on
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | August 14th, 2008 | Filed under Innovation, Video Applications
I’ve been writing here a lot in praise of video conferencing, mainly from an enterprise perspective. The benefits such as travel costs reduction and inter-continental work meetings are easy to explain. However video conferencing can be used just as effectively on a personal level, for instance to bridge between geographically separated family members. A good example for such families, separated for a long time and by circumstances that do not allow them to physically unite, are those of US soldiers
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | July 1st, 2008 | Filed under Video Conferencing
[This post is written by Ariel David, Video Technologies Expert in RADVISION's Networking Business Unit. Ariel has close to a decade of experience in video technologies and has embedded systems for video and image coding, video enhancement technologies and the management and development of integrated solutions. He can be reached at arield@radvision.com ] High definition (HD) is everywhere. If you haven’t read about it in one of the posts here, you probably saw it featured in a commercial. If you
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By guest | June 24th, 2008 | Filed under Video Conferencing
When I was a child, if I wanted to meet with a friend in the afternoon for some unplanned quality time, there were basically two options: the direct one, where you would call his home phone and hope he’s there (or at least that his mother knows where he is…), and the indirect one, where you just wander around the neighborhood and hopefully run into him. Oh, life was much simpler then.Two break-through concepts emerged since then, and totally changed
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | June 10th, 2008 | Filed under Collaboration, Unified Communication
Video conferencing is reaching out to everyone, including the desktop. Still I am often confronted with the fact that video conferencing has been “the NEXT big thing” for more than a decade, and has yet to become a truly popular means of communication (like, for instance, the mobile phone). Researchers have found that there are a few problems - primarily psychological - that may explain the slow penetration of video conferencing into our lives, and also the reluctance of many
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | May 27th, 2008 | Filed under Innovation, Video Conferencing
One tends to not give any time to interoperability. Interoperability (or “interop” for short) is defined as the ability for two components to work and communicate together. We encounter interoperability all the time and everywhere, even if we never stop to think about it. You can call my mobile phone without worrying about the manufacturer of my handset (or yours) and the call will be connected. You can send me an e-mail and I will be able to read it
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | May 13th, 2008 | Filed under Interoperability, Video Conferencing
I’ve previously discussed how Telepresence is making Teleportation seem closer than ever. But there’s another cool invention, previously available only for Star Trek crew members, that is making its way to our desktop - The Holodeck. If you are not a Star Trek buff, here’s a brief explanation: “Holodeck,” short for Hologram Deck, is a virtual reality system, evolved sometime in the not-terribly-distant future (the 2360s), which transforms an empty room into a virtual world, including props, characters, background, etc.
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By Sagee Ben-Zedeff | May 6th, 2008 | Filed under Collaboration, Innovation
