Cisco made a lot of noise with their entry into what John Chamber's openly described as telepresence. See Cisco's Chambers Predicts Dawn Of 'Telepresence. As we watch Cisco's TelePresence offering unfold, we all have high hopes. Many of us have some misgivings to balance those hopes.

While I have a pretty strong Cisco relationship, for a number of reasons, I haven't seen TelePresence personally myself. My friend and colleague Jon Arnold had a chance to watch a live demo a couple of days ago. Like me, Jon's involved in testing the new Nokia N93 and had it along when he attended the demo. He wrote about it on his blog.

Cisco TelePresence - Up Close and Personal

Today, Cisco Canada invited press and analysts for a live demo of TelePresence, and they did not disappoint! I was briefed on Telepresence recently, and posted about it, so I've made my views known already. While my basic thinking hasn't changed about the overall business case, experiencing Telepresence up close makes it very real, and you can really see why Cisco is so excited about this launch.

Before getting to the demo, I just wanted to say Cisco Canada did a great job putting this together, and Nitin Kawale gave an informative overview of Telepresence. The underlying rationale is to cut down on travel costs, plain and simple. By providing a life-like, real time experience that businesses have never had before, it is easy to see how this idea would take hold and that a business case can be built around it. Of course, for the investment we're talking about here, this is only going to fly in large companies who have serious travel budgets. It's not a mass market offering, that's for sure, but I can certainly see the fit. And I'm sure Cisco doesn't have to sell thousands of these to make it worthwhile. [read full post]

Jon's one of those people I read religiously. We had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion at the ITExpo last October, and as always, Jon made me think about some things in different ways. If you don't follow Jon's blog, I highly recommend it.

If telepresence as a business need, or Cisco's TelePresence solution are of interest, I encourage you to go check out Jon's photos, watch the video he took, and read his earlier post. I absolutely agree with Jon's assessment -

For now, TelePresence will appeal mainly to the Mercedes end of the enterprise spectrum, so it's far from being a mainstream product. I see it as a high end niche offering, but in time I'm sure it will be scaled down for the rest of us. It also remains to be seen just how effectively customers really use TelePresence.