Tandberg expands telepresence line, targets service providers

Tandberg today announced two new telepresence products aimed at providing customers greater choices, and enabling network-based telepresence services.

The new telepresence products are the Tandberg Telepresence T3, a high-end immersive system that incorporates furniture, room decoration and high-definition cameras and screens to create a ‘same-room’ feel and the Tandberg Telepresence Server, which supports multi-vendor conferencing endpoints to enable interconnection of services. In addition, Tandberg is launching what it calls Tandberg Total Service, a package of expert services to enable easier deployment and operation of telepresence up to and including providing a hosted or managed service.

The telepresence market has been a hot space in 2008, and Tandberg’s new products enable the company to compete more effectively with companies signing telecom service providers such as AT&T and BT as managed telepresence providers.

“We have had several telepresence series on the market for some time now,” said Pete Nutley, director of global product marketing for Tandberg. “We have gotten feedback from a number of customers and channel partners on where they would like to see this going, and we have incorporated those changes in these new products. The feedback we’ve gotten has been very consistent – customers want choices in everything;”

At the high end, where the Tandberg T3 plays, the choices for the executive experience including such things as 65-inch 1080p video monitors, warm wood walls, table lighting and a Nordic sky blue backgrounds “to give that next-generation feeling that the person is sitting across from you,” Nutley said. In addition, the system offers one-button ease-of-use features and flexibility to connect with any standards-based video system, Nutley said.