Editorial: how far down can Cisco drill before meeting Vidyo coming up?

A couple of weeks ago we highlighted a suggestion we’d heard from Vidyo that video conferencing on personal devices, tablets, phones and personal computers deserved to be termed telepresence, because it allows users to be relaxed and more intimate during a call rather than having a meeting in the more structured and perhaps artificial environment of a telepresence suite.

Reader Rolf Laggar of videokonferens.com disagrees, and says “No, I think you have the right definition with the pictures on your website. Telepresence for me are three screens (sometimes one) special furniture, and people in natural size.

It is just confusing for users, customers and people who are not in the industry to have different names on the same thing. Telepresence would in my opinion, be called videoconference premium or de luxe instead ...”

Celebrating the 5th anniversary of Cisco TelePresence, it might seem that the company is finding itself torn between two sides of the argument. It is working hard to expand its offering to small and medium enterprises while still holding on to the TelePresence quality and differentiation. And Cisco Jabber (announced now but trialling in 2012) won’t do much to clarify matters either. Will $99 a month Callway? Perhaps.

Sure, Cisco holds the majority of the TelePresence market and well done them for what they have achieved, and fine if they continue to hold the lead—in that market– but all the explosive growth forecast is in desktop and personal devices, and the company can’t afford to ignore it, hence their recent announcements.

The question is perhaps, how far down towards personal VC solutions can Cisco drill before meeting Vidyo coming up?

What do you think? Let me know.

Keith Warburton
editor@vcinsight.com