Peter Burrows, author of Cisco's down-market video-conferencing move, from Business Week, on October 1st, explains how Cisco bought-out of Tandberg, a business which owns Pure Digital, has made video-conferencing cheaper and better cross compatibility. Cisco marketed its TelePresence systems back in 2006, but it was only available for the wealthy business clients at $300,000 per room, due to the high bandwidth, ultra clear graphics, and huge light fixtures positioned around the room. Cisco has recently bought out Tandberg, and when combined they produced video-conferencing phones at an exorbitant smaller price, about $34,000 and for the portable cellular phones and laptops, only $1,000 to $2,000. The company hopes to appeal to a greater number of clients that wish to use the lower-cost systems, who don't have a big budget crisis.

For at least 20 years, people have always wanted a way to chat with other people visually and audio - induced. Before the merge only the wealthy could afford TelePresence. Cisco's approach was definitely going to hit a brick wall, said analyst Andrew Davis who works at the Wainhouse Research. With Cisco's move, people will have a cheaper yet more productive way at doing it. Also, with the cross - platform of Tandberg's Pure Digital, at least some cross compatibility will be accomplished, by using either technology people will still communicate to the other person at the other end. Cisco hopes to sell out at a price-cut along with combing the cheaper technology from Pure Digital.

At one time Cisco gave away TelePresence with other Cisco stuff, merely because at one point only TelePresence (TP) only worked with Cisco products. That's a reason why they sometimes couldn't give TelePresence away --- it wouldn't work with anything anyone else had said LifeSize CEO Craig Malloy. He also explains how it was a proprietary format and would not work with anything else. Also with the downsizing of the economy, workers and staff need smaller, cheaper, yet more efficient way at talking to people around the world, and if Cisco could do that again like it did back in 2006, but now with the less pricey hardware and software, it can blow it back out for anyone to use. With the space of a lounge being used for Telecommunications would disappear into a small modem, for a personal tele room.

With the help of Tandberg, number 2 to the telesystems at around 1.5 million, which Cisco has bought out, low-cost supplies are now affordable to small-end businesses and even for example the FBI or the CIA. Cisco's massive 20,000 person sales work-force will have to travel around the globe to spread both the news and train with different systems to either upgrade or do a fresh install. Davis's analogy of the workforce to a 9.0 Earthquake on the Richter scale really helps drive the image of how hard these people will need to work. As Burrows explains, Cisco won't sell TelePresence now in a vacuum, over the years now it will start to fully merge with Pure Digital and will invent things like portable IP Phones, and camera cell phones.

Since the advent, Cisco's work will help people for the better in the future; Companies and businesses now can change the nature of the work. They will apply to smaller businesses with lower budgets. Also, people will not have to fly out as much to Vegas for big conferences , since now the stock market and the economy is in peril and unstable. Cross-compatibility will help people using different software still send the message to other people using completely different software as well. It will help us communicate better, faster, wiser, and more in tune with what we need and have. On a final note it can only get better since people have the technology and can innovate on.

Works Cited

Burrows, Peter. Cisco's Down Market Video Conferencing Move. BusinessWeek Recent Version (2009): Two Pages. 10/05/09 a target="blank" href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2009/tc2009101_844344.htm?campaign_id=yhoo">http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2009/tc2009101_84... >.