Chuck Stucki, VP and GM, Telepresence Systems, Cisco Systems, Inc gave us an update on Cisco's position in the world of telepresence. He started out by emphasizing that John Chambers, Cisco's CEO, is a huge believer in telepresence and is pushing Cisco's growth in this initiative.

Cisco envisions a new form of communications they refer to as, "The Human Network" which combines technology, information systems and social structures. Regardless of what device a person is using, the important thing it that they enable a human touch and feel between parties.

Internally, Cisco has been seeing 50% utilization per 10-hour day of the telepresence rooms. The majority of use is for internal communications with 30% customer-involved.


Core functions are where Cisco is seeing the most use of products. Stucki didn't specify what types of internal meetings, but things like product development and management meetings come to mind. Fast decision making using telepresence rather than waiting to schedule physical meetings improves efficiencies.

Stucki mentioned that visual communications are even more important for cross-cultural communications. With the many acquisitions Cisco's been involved with around the world, I'm sure they have first-hand experience with this. He mentioned that this is especially important for people speaking in their non-native languages.

Customers are looking for an easy to use system tied into an interoperable global network, built on industry standards forming a complete communications solution. From immersive telepresence solutions down to adding someone into a meeting from a cell phone, interoperability is a key to factor to make systems usable and flexible for real-world business communications.