Virtual conference

TECHNOLOGY: Holographic representations are the next big thing in the virtual-reality world as three corporate giants prepare to launch their hi-tech conferencing solutions in India.

Do you recall the virtual telepresence of the Jedi knights at the council meetings in Star Wars: Episode-III? While computer scientists are still researchingholographic representation, telecommunication technology now makes it possible for corporate executives to experience a virtual reality in their boardrooms.

So what you have is a full-immersion experience that involves special rooms with very high-quality, life-size display screens providing users a virtual reality way to collaborate.

To attendees, it looks as if their video counterparts are sitting at the table with them. Sounds like a scene out of Star Wars and Minority Report, right?

While Hewlett-Packard's Halo and Polycom's Real Presence Experience (RPX) solution are still to come to India, Cisco rolled out the Cisco Telepresence solution during John Chambers visit here in December 2006, just a few months after its global launch in the US in October. And now Polycom plans to launch RPX in India in May.

"We will deploy the solution in Mumbai and Delhi at our sites in May," says Yugal Sharma, country manager, Polycom. According to industry sources, HP, too, plans to launch Halo here in the coming year.

The full-immersion experience by Cisco's Telepresence is created with the use of high definition plasma screens, hi-end sound technology (which makes the sound appear from where the speaker is sitting) and system integration for predetermined camera angles, background colours options and special lighting.

The solution provides users the experience of sitting across an oval shaped conference table with its video counterpart.

Similarly, Polycom's RPX creates the boardroom environment with similar backdrops, sound technology and creates an oval shaped conference table. The difference here is the use of video walls which overcome the limitation of the plasma screen size of 60 inches.

Compares Sharma: "Polycom's solution is based on an industry defined international telecommunication union platform and Cisco's solution is proprietary technology."

Explaining that there is a huge market for such high-end applications, Alok Shende, director, ICT Practice, Frost and Sullivan, says, "You can even get a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34 per cent over the next three years."

Admitting that the company was taken by surprise with the way the market has reacted to these solutions, Sharma says, "We are getting requests to deploy these solutions in India and expect to get at least 10-15 customers on board for these solutions by mid 2008."

Even a price tag of Rs 2-2.5 crore for Polycom's RPX or $300,000 for Cisco's Telepresence 3000 series which allows for 12 people to conference and $80,000 for the Telepresence 1000 series for one-to-one conferencing, is not a deterrent and India Inc is willing to deploy these world class solutions. And this is only the beginning of a revolution.