Despite the tough economic environment, sales of telepresence hardware, software and services grew to $567 million in 2009, says ABI Research in a new study.

"Nearly any size company has access to telepresence and video conferencing services," says David Lemelin, director of the ABI's Enterprise Communications Research Service. "Suppliers are helping businesses transition to telepresence by introducing personal and room-based HD video conferencing solutions. Telepresence room rentals are also on the rise."

Expanding the options for Read more...

LifeSize beefs up its infrastructure product line with the Video Center, a one button HD streaming, recording, and auto-publishing solution.

This $30K solution (Flash-based which is popular but don't tell Steve Jobs who is ranting against Flash these days) does in one box what other solutions do in two.

When the incoming stream comes from a LifeSize 220 endpoint (which has the power to transcode), Video Center performs the live streaming and publishing at one time. The single box can encode 20 HD quality live sessions or 40 SD sessions Read more...

You're late and never going to make that conference. You stop, pull out your Blackberry, go to your WebEx meeting invitation in your email and click on the "To join this meeting link."

That launches the WebEx Meeting Center app on your BlackBerry smartphone. You enter the meeting number, find your meeting, and learn one more time why they call it Crackberry,The Addictive One.

You'll need a Blackberry (QWERTY or touch-screen), OS 4.6 or higher with access to capable 3G or wi-fi (make sure your mobile operator's network supports simultaneous voice Read more...

The European Commission approved the $3.4 billion acquisition, and the U.S. Department of Justice won't challenge it: Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg will go through and change the video conferencing landscape forever.

But as with any political victory, there's wheeling-&-dealing that pays the price for the deal.

In this case, to win EC blessing, Cisco agrees to enhance interoperability between its multi-screen video conferencing offerings and those of competitors.

To blunt the concern of European and American regulators about the potential Read more...