The deal basically unified BT’s Global Video Exchange services with Orange Business Services Telepresence Community. The operators will also issue a directory for its customers so they know who and how to contact firms on the other network.

BT and Orange are the latest operators to offer inter-operator TelePresence services. Both are already interconnected to Tata’s global TelePresence portfolio, which includes enterprise users on its own network, that of partners such as Telefornica, as well as some three dozen public rooms with TelePresence systems. BT is also connected to AT&T’s TelePresence network.

As part of its “conquests 2015″ plan, Orange Business has identified cloud computing, M2M, as well as video conferencing, as “priority areas for growth.” What’s interesting is that all of these areas are part green ICT, and represent technologies that should help drive efficiencies in the enterprise, cities, and between people.

Of course, the operator didn’t mentioned the green element as such, but it is cool that a major international telco now sees much of its growth potential in green services.

Here are what Orange Business is setting out to do:

• generating 500 million euros in cloud computing by 2015 by accelerating its developments focusing on four areas: cloud-ready networks, “as a service” infrastructures, “as a service” collaborative solutions and communications, and application stores.
• selling 10 million SIM cards by 2015 on the M2M market (or Internet of Things), capitalizing on: the development of services beyond connectivity, its dedicated international expertise center in Brussels and its role as the driving force for the standardization of the market.
• becoming number 1 for videoconferencing in France and one of the top three worldwide. The guiding principles include: interoperability of terminals and networks, development of managed and hosted solutions, as well as simplification of uses through user support.

Oh, the fourth objective in the list is to generate 1 billion euros in revenues from emerging countries.

For Vedder Price, a Chicago-headquartered law firm, the decision was about performance when it upgraded its video conferencing system to Vidyo.

According to Vidyo, it was chosen to replace the firm’s legacy system which, according to the law firm, had become extremely limited in terms of flexibility and scalability. Vedder Price purchased and deployed the Vidyo system in October of 2010 after a thorough trial period in which they sampled Vidyo as a service to see if it would effectively satisfy the firm’s need to allow its lawyers and other staff to use the system for a variety of purposes between its three U.S. locations in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

“Vidyo offers significant advantages over other options, allowing us to easily and affordably expand into the future with incredible geographic flexibility, interoperability, and the choice of using a variety of different devices to access video conferences,” said Maureen Durack, director of MIS at Vedder Price. “After using Vidyo, we realized that legacy systems are archaic solutions. Those companies can only go so far in re-engineering what they have. Vidyo’s one-of-a-kind SVC-based software platform with Adaptive Video Layering is a totally new approach that is much more suited for firms such as ours that have an immediate need for cost-effective, high quality video conferencing. With Vidyo we won’t have to worry about expansion and updating in coming years because they’re committed to staying on the forefront of technology and keeping up with new form factors such as mobile devices.”

According to Lonnie Horvat, Vedder Price’s Audio-Visual Systems Specialist, “When I was approached about testing Vidyo as a possible component of our Unified Communications strategy, I was already familiar with the Vidyo online demo but hadn’t put the actual equipment to the test. We rigorously tested the VidyoGateway, VidyoRouter, VidyoPortal, VidyoRoom Units and VidyoDesktop for nearly 3 months. Our conclusion was that Vidyo provided the best high-quality image with the smallest network footprint; equipment and infrastructure costs were considerably lower than any other comparable option, and Vidyo provided the most flexible solution for now and into the future.”

Vedder Price is currently using VidyoConferencing for daily interactions among the firm’s attorneys across all of its locations, ongoing continuing legal education trainings for Vedder Price attorneys, and for remote depositions with clients and outside firms in various cities around the world.

According to Polycom, the new solution now “delivers high-quality, reliable and secure conversations with Polycom UltimateHD technology and patented innovations that ensure great experiences even in congested networking environments.”

Polycom added that its video communications gives the highest quality available with the lowest consumption of network resources – using H.264 coding and compression technology that delivers life-like video experiences while consuming up to 50% less network bandwidth than alternative products.

The RealPresence Ready solution is available in North America with prices starting at US$17,999 and service options starting at US$2,385, which according to Polycom, offers the lowest total cost of ownership for high quality video conferencing systems and can be financed for less than the cost of one business trip per month.

Other options are available for RealPresence Ready, including the Polycom Eagle Eye Director, Polycom telepresence m500 for tablets, and Polycom VVX 1500 business video phones.

“There’s something about seeing the person you’re working with that a voice alone can’t provide,” said Gene Crosby, chief operating officer at Jackson Spalding, an Atlanta, Georgia-based firm of 80 creative professionals who develop advertising, media, and public relations campaigns. “We need to be able to communicate face-to-face, internally and with our clients, even if we aren’t in the same place. When looking for affordable, high-quality and secure video conferencing capabilities, we needed to weigh the investment carefully. Choosing Polycom telepresence solutions was easily the smartest purchase we made last year, and we’ve seen amazing results. Polycom improves our productivity and the work we do, and our employees and clients feel much more engaged.”

Meanwhile, Polycom also revealed several new services in the cloud by its partners.

First, a new cloud-based “Virtual Room” service from 8×8, Inc., enabled by the Polycom UC Intelligent Core software platform, will include Polycom HDX video solutions and Polycom VVX business media phones. 8×8′s “Virtual Room” service allows users to join meetings via video and audio devices as well as web telephony and smart mobile phone clients.

Another new offering is the BroadCloud Video service, a cloud-based hosted infrastructure that integrates with existing service provider offerings and Polycom UC solutions.

Press release: Polycom(R) RealPresence(TM) Ready and New Cloud Offerings Powered by Polycom UC Software Make Business-Grade Video More Flexible and Affordable Than Ever for SMBs.

The report compared ten sustainable telecoms solutions provided by 18 of the largest telecoms operators in the European market, such as video conferencing, online collaboration, and cloud computing.

According to Verdantix, five telcos – AT&T, BT, Orange (France Telecom), Swisscom and Telefonica – lead the European market for sustainable telecoms because of their integrated commercial strategies to apply sustainability right across their products and services, coupled with in-depth organisational commitment to sustainability resulting in class-leading corporate sustainability performance.

Quoted in a press release by Orange Business Services, David Metcalfe, the Verdantix director who led the research, said: “The telecoms providers in the leader’s quadrant boast the broadest portfolio of services that target sustainability growth markets like electricity and gas smart metering.”
Specially on Orange Business Services, Metcalfe added: “Orange stands out as one of a few telecoms operators that have been most successful in creating, marketing and delivering telecoms solutions which offer sustainability benefits to business customers.”

Orange scored among the top two telecoms providers for sustainable consulting, cloud computing and solutions enabling telecommuting and is one of the top three providers for smart meters and M2M solutions, according to Metcalfe.

Infrastructure hardware solutions, such as video routers, MCUs and gateways, solve multipoint and proxy traversal challenges with on-premise equipment and high up-front costs. The latest cloud-based solutions take a new approach using distributed, dynamically responding resources to provide the same functional capabilities. These shared resource pools make video conferencing less expensive and easier to expand, the company said.

Nefsis takes cloud computing a step further by applying its proximity heuristics to dynamically allocate resources in real-time as close as possible to online meeting participants. The heuristics include physical geo-location, ping time to several potential virtual conference servers, resource load and availability, and more. By considering these factors and several others, Nefsis intelligently virtualizes each conference at the best location. This is markedly different from static data centers and hosted services, which do not respond in any meaningful way as employees move around and start conferences from different locations.

“The distributed nature of cloud computing brings automated load balancing, failover and scalability to a product category – video conferencing infrastructure – that has historically required high investment for a single point of failure and only a few ports for expansion. In other words, cloud computing is more cost effective and easier to expand, and you get some resiliency to boot,” said Allen Drennan, Nefsis Chief Technology Officer. “Our new, advanced proximity heuristics sets us apart from hosted services and less distributed cloud solutions.”

The state-of-the-art advances were made to the Nefsis global cloud through several recent phased-in updates and are available now to all Nefsis customers and free trial users. For a free 14-day trial of Nefsis Professional, visit Nefsis.com.

Press release: Nefsis Distributed Cloud Technology Accelerates Multipoint Video Conferencing — SAN DIEGO, March 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ –.

The projections are based on data from 133 companies who have used the Swisscom’s Green-ICT Check, which helps them calculate the benefits of green ICT solutions they have deployed. The data is then extrapolated out to the whole business community in the country.“The results were astounding: Efficient ICT solutions could enable Swiss companies to save a quantity of CO2 equivalent to the annual emissions of 250,000 cars (750,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents), the electricity consumption of around 100,000 households (493,000 MWh) or around 500 years of travel time,” Swisscom said. “The calculations also show that there is even more potential. Efficient ICT solutions would allow potential annual savings in the costs of energy, travel and travel time of around CHF 7 billion, a figure that includes the investment costs for mobile workplaces”

To better inform its customers, Swisscom has launched a new label for particularly climate-friendly products, such as video conferencing, home office solutions, and IT services from energy efficient data centres.

“This label will be given to products whose total CO2 emissions are considerably lower than comparable products. These total emissions include emissions from the manufacture, operation and disposal of a product,” the operator said.

Press release: Swisscom – CHF 7 billion savings with green ICT solutions.

With Vidyo’s support for Microsoft Lync, users will now be able to access Vidyo’s personal telepresence by simply selecting it from within their Lync desktop application.  Vidyo’s Microsoft Lync Plug-In is also backward compatible with Microsoft OCS 2007, said Vidyo.“Vidyo´s Plug-In for Microsoft Lync provides users with an exceptional ‘personal telepresence’ experience, allowing them to have easy access to the same low latency and exceptional video fidelity on multiparty conferences that, until now, was confined to costly and location-limited telepresence rooms,” said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s co-founder and CEO. “Vidyo’s platform enables personal telepresence, and an important part of our strategy is to integrate it with leading platforms such as Microsoft Lync for ad-hoc calls or Microsoft Outlook for planned meetings. Vidyo now delivers plug-ins for IBM Sametime, Adobe Connect and Microsoft Lync and Outlook.”

How the Vidyo Lync Plug-In Works

Vidyo´s plug-in connects Microsoft Lync with the VidyoDesktop™ client, providing end-users with the ability to initiate Vidyo conferences using their Lync-based contacts and other unified communications capabilities, while updating presence status automatically when users start and end Vidyo conferences.  Instant Messaging sessions can be escalated to Vidyo’s multiparty conference by clicking on the Vidyo icon in the Microsoft Lync desktop to provide users with a seamless and high-quality video conferencing experience.   When the user clicks on the “VidyoConferencing™” button from a pull-down menu or presence icon for a given contact in Microsoft Lync, the contact is automatically invited to the user´s Vidyo meeting room, and a “guest hyper-link” is provided if the contact is not a registered Vidyo user. Additionally, Vidyo enabled users can connect easily with customers, partners and vendors outside of their Lync network using the same “guest hyper-link” mechanism, offering simple connectivity to virtually anyone. Information regarding Lync can be found at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/.

Vidyo has also simplified scheduling and guest participant invitations with a separate plug-in for Microsoft Outlook.  While generating a calendar invite for a meeting, users can simply click the VidyoConferencing button on their Outlook tool bar to add a URL that takes invited guests directly into the user´s virtual meeting room, providing easy one-click access for invitees.

Since all Vidyo technology and products deliver superior IP network error-resiliency, the Vidyo platform accessed through the plug-in enables IT managers deploying Lync to eliminate the costly dedicated networks and equipment necessary to achieve high-quality, multi-party video conferences with other video solutions. VidyoConferencing also enables teleworking or traveling participants to be included from outside the corporate network using just the Internet, and through firewalls with the VidyoProxy™.

Vidyo is the first and only low-latency, highly error-resilient software-based, multi-party “telepresence” quality video conferencing and collaboration solution that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time via the Internet and other general IP networks.  Its unique VidyoRouter™ architecture provides rate and resolution matching for each endpoint while dynamically adapting to changing bandwidth.  This means Lync users will receive the best quality video communication possible via any network.  Vidyo’s technology, based on H.264 SVC standard, is a key advancement in making natural, high quality video conferencing universally available over the Internet, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi networks.  Vidyo platform partners include HP, Ricoh, Google, Hitachi, Teliris and Intel.

Vidyo´s Plug-In for Microsoft Lync is the latest integration of Vidyo’s best-of-breed communications and collaboration solution with the existing unified communications productivity environments of its customers.  Vidyo has also recently announced integration with Adobe® Connect™ and IBM® Lotus Sametime®.

Availability

The Vidyo Plug-In for Microsoft Lync will be available on March 15th through the Vidyo reseller network.

“Ashish Gupta brings a wealth of industry experience to lead Vidyo’s marketing and corporate development efforts,” said Ofer Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of Vidyo. “He has successfully led product marketing, product management, channels and business development teams in unified communication, collaboration, mobile and telecom companies with a focus on growing and scaling the business. He is a proven and seasoned leader who brings to Vidyo a demonstrated track-record and a passion for our business.”

“Vidyo offers a game-changing solution to the age old problem of proprietary and expensive legacy video conferencing systems that has resulted in islands of collaboration within enterprises,”said Ashish Gupta, Vidyo’s CMO and SVP of Corporate Development. “Vidyo’s architecture has a several-year technology lead over legacy systems, is available today, and is being used by marquee customers and partners to deliver unmatched video collaboration solutions. Vidyo provides pristine video conferencing solutions that have democratized video collaboration by allowing customers to use off-the-shelf laptops, desktops and mobile devices to collaborate freely at price points that are substantially lower than legacy systems. In a relatively short time, Vidyo has made a significant impact on the video conferencing and communications industries, and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to its continued success.”

Ashish joined Vidyo on January 3, 2011, from Microsoft, where he was an integral member of the executive team that recently launched Microsoft’s Lync solution as the leader of the Business Development and Strategy team for the Microsoft Office Division’s Unified Communications Group. During his tenure at Microsoft, Ashish also led the Channel Sales and Marketing team for the Real Time Communications group to increase performance through new channels and inside sales, led and managed key Microsoft Office and Unified Communications and Collaboration strategic alliances to increase customer adoption, and co-led key strategic initiatives including the development of Microsoft’s Mobile Worker, Contact Center and Hosted Unified Communications offerings to deliver holistic communications and collaboration solutions.

The pilot will hook mobile devices – initially the Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet, into Elisa’s existing service using Vidyo’s technology for desktop and room-based systems. Vidyo also has a solution supporting the iPad, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the Elisa trial.

“Business professionals are ‘on the move’ and as they become more mobile, they need communication tools that allow them to connect to video conferences from whatever devices are most convenient to them, wherever they are,” said Pasi Mäenpää, Elisa’s Corporate Customers Business Unit Director. “Smart phones and tablet PCs allow enterprise personnel to be flexible and mobile; to conduct ‘on the go’ informal meetings. Travel time and waiting at airports can now be used productively and efficiently. Desktop, and now smart phone and tablet computers, offer much untapped potential and only Vidyo can enable this quality of video conferencing.”

According to a demonstration on Vidyo’s website, the new service will work over any IP-based wireless network, including Wi-Fi, 3G and eventually, 4G networks.

See a demo below: