Telepresence

AT&T Telepresence Solution^® - It's Not Just Business as Usual

As business becomes more global there's a greater need to meet with international colleagues, customers and partners. But how many business trips are too many? Before you travel, consider:

• The expense of airfare, hotels and taxis
• The loss of productive work hours when people are traveling
• Time spent away from family
• Your company's growing carbon footprint

Fortunately, there's an alternative: telepresence.

What is Telepresence?

Telepresence is a high-definition videoconferencing service that gives you a virtual, face-to-face meeting experience without the expense and productivity drains of travel. Telepresence allows you to meet with people across the globe as if they were in the same room with you.

Build Telepresence Communities: Inside and out

AT&T Telepresence Solution can transform how your organization conducts business by enabling you to build internal and external collaboration communities. AT&T Telepresence Solution supports multiple types of face-to-face meeting experiences:

• Larger boardrooms and conference rooms: Feel like you are meeting in person and sitting around a common table with other remote telepresence participants. You can easily see every raised eyebrow and hear every sigh, giving you an experience participants describe as "immersive".
• Smaller conference or meeting rooms: Engage in life-like face-to-face conversations and more productive collaborative sessions by enjoying telepresence from almost any small to medium sized meeting location.
• Collaboration from your desk or office: With smaller, streamlined personal screen sizes, you can participate in high definition face-to-face meetings and discussions without ever leaving your desk or office.

A Telepresence system delivers the value of collaboration

The true value of a telepresence solution isn't just measured in travel savings. It delivers value as you:

• Accelerate decisions and time-to-market because meetings are more productive
• Use scarce resources more efficiently - people are collaborating instead of traveling
• Reduce up-front capital investments by letting AT&T provide the equipment and manage your telepresence "in the cloud"
• Make use of existing supported video equipment without investing in expensive bridging capability

Extend your Telepresence system with AT&T Business Exchange

AT&T makes scheduling and participating in a meeting easy through our scheduling portal, support for Microsoft® Outlook® and IBM® Lotus Notes® integration and by allowing a "single button to push" to start a meeting.

With the AT&T Business Exchange you can extend the benefits of your telepresence system to almost anyone you do business with.

And AT&T Telepresence Solution is supported by the AT&T global MPLS-enabled network, delivering global reach, reliability, flexibility, and quality of service engineering via our Virtual Private Network services.

Learn more about unified communications services backed by the global reach, scalability and reliability of the AT&T MPLS IP-based network.

Consider

When you're planning to use telepresence services in your organization, here are some things to consider:

Is your company facing pressure to be green?

It's not unusual for companies today to face pressure from shareholders, the marketplace and regulators to enable more energy efficient choices, reduce expenses and limit carbon emissions. A telepresence solution can help companies achieve these goals.

Can your current networking infrastructure offer the quality necessary for video transmission?

AT&T has global IP-based network capabilities, assets and resources that are highly regarded in the marketplace. This network serves as the foundation for our telepresence solution, ensuring you get the quality and reliability you need.

What solution is right for your business?

AT&T can handle everything from planning and design, installation, network provisioning and end-to-end monitoring and management of the solution. We can even own the equipment so all you pay is a monthly fee, avoiding most of the big up-front investment. And we have the expertise to help you choose from a range of management, equipment, access and pricing options.

Does telepresence need to work with your existing videoconferencing?

With AT&T Telepresence Solution® you get the ability to connect to a variety of standards-based video conferencing equipment via the AT&T Business Exchange. Your AT&T representative can help you investigate integrating the new solution with your current technology.

Do you need to accommodate mobile users?

If you need to add mobile users to a telepresence meeting you may need an audio-only option, especially if you are keeping some of your older videoconferencing equipment.

Do you need to share documents during meetings?

Web collaboration is a natural extension to telepresence. AT&T Telepresence Solution® offers this capability via AT&T Connect®.

Design

AT&T will work with you to design a telepresence solution that fits your needs. We take into account your core business applications and existing equipment. With the help of a dedicated project manager we will:

• Document site survey and room requirements
• Document your requirements for the solution
• Provide a detailed design, network deployment plan, acceptance test plan and network readiness assessment

Our video specialists use a Value Case Tool to help quantify how telepresence can benefit your company. We also let you try it out with our "Have a Meeting on Us" program so you can experience it first-hand.

For a helpful resource, see our paper Five Best Practices for Unified Communications [PDF, 734kb].

Service Delivery

To help you deploy your telepresence solution we'll provide a dedicated project manager to help the installation goes smoothly. AT&T coordinates the complete installation to help ensure you get the solution designed for your business.

After delivering the hardware, we can help:

• Assemble and install components
• Perform a logical implementation of the systems
• Order, install and test AT&T VPN components
• Conduct an acceptance test
• Conduct user training

Customer Support

AT&T handles network provisioning and end-to-end monitoring and management of the solution. Our help desk remote assistance service and on-site equipment repair and maintenance help lessen the burden on your IT staff.

We also offer a Rapid Adoption Marketing Program (RAMP) to help build awareness with your employees and encourage them to use the system. The program includes posters, flyers, reference guides, training invitations and training videos.