Tandberg, BT Team for Telepresence

Jun. 24, 2009

TANDBERG and BT have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to deliver the first global non-proprietary solution for inter-company telepresence and videoconferencing.

Under the MOU, the BT One Source service, using TANDBERG’s standards-based infrastructure, allows an enterprise to collaborate internally and externally across differing video and telepresence systems.

This enterprise-wide and business-to-business collaboration is made possible by BT’s One Source managed services and MPLS network and the expansion of BT Global Video Exchange with TANDBERG’s infrastructure. BT Global Video Exchange enables telepresence calls between different company networks. The combination of BT’s managed concierge and network services with TANDBERG’s portfolio of standards-based telepresence, room and personal video systems, gives customers easy to use, low cost, high performance reliability and high-definition video.

BT One Source for TANDBERG gives interoperability from the desktop to the telepresence suite for point to point and multipoint calls. For the first time, TANDBERG Telepresence T3 users and Polycom TPX/RPX users will be able to collaborate regardless of the platform or network. This is only possible with the TANDBERG Telepresence Server infrastructure interoperability feature.

TANDBERG is the only company to offer a telepresence solution that maintains the multi-screen, high-definition experience when calling out to a third-party telepresence systems.

Enterprise-wide video collaboration is proven to cut out costs by reducing travel and increase organizational effectiveness by speeding decision making.

Aaron McCormack, CEO of BT Conferencing, said: “Telepresence is all about collaboration. BT One Source for TANDBERG makes telepresence easy to use, reliable and cost effective throughout a customer’s enterprise. We are helping companies maximise their investment in telepresence technology by allowing them to collaborate both within their own business and across networks with partners, suppliers, customers and others, around the globe.”

Fredrik Halvorsen, CEO of TANDBERG, said: “Our vision is to connect people visually within and between organizations - without regard to network or vendor choice. The visually enabled B2B supply chain will revolutionize the way that companies communicate with each other, allowing them to truly streamline processes, be cost-efficient and bring products to market faster.

“TANDBERG was first to market with telepresence interoperability. Now this new initiative and MOU with BT further strengthens our relationship and makes the vision of seamless interoperability across different networks and devices a reality for our customers.”