Glowpoint enhances hosted telepresence for Cisco users

Cloud-based videoconferencing service provider Glowpoint has announced enhancements to its managed video services offering for users of Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) telepresence equipment.

Among the new capabilities is a hosted Cisco telepresence infrastructure, including the Cisco TelePresence Video Communications Server (VCS), Video Communications Expressway, TelePresence Server MSE 8710 and Cisco TelePresence Movi for mobile telepresence.

The hosted infrastructure offering gives Cisco TelePresence a more affordable and flexible way to expand video coverage to remote office and home office workers, rather than purchasing and installing new hardware for multiple locations.

Glowpoint also is supporting interoperability through the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol and enabling a managed unified communications gateway based on the Cisco VCS.

The interoperability move is a response to what Glowpoint described as rapidly growing usage of immersive telepresence systems among existing customers, with more than 48,000 hours of meetings taking place on these systems in the first half of 2011, an increase of more than 100 percent over the same period in 2010. That volume and frequency of usage means that it is time for interoperability between the systems of different vendors, Glowpoint said. Hence, the adoption of the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol and support for Cisco's own ActivePresence multi-vendor call set-up capability.

The unified communications gateway links telepresence systems with unified communications applications from Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and others. A Microsoft Lync user, for example, would be able to collaborate va a Cisco VCS with users of any standards-based telepresence or video conferencing systems.

For more:
- see this Glowpoint release

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