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Virtual Meeting Technologies Take Center Stage in AT&T Event

By conducting a semi-annual meeting completely virtually, AT&T saved over $100,000 and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 62 metric tonnes, while a research survey finds that over one-third of business flights may switch to telepresence meetings.

Telepresence -- the use of high-quality video terminals instead of face-to-face meetings -- has made the news several times in recent days, showing how companies are looking at alternatives to business travel as a cost-saving and footprint-reduction measure.

AT&T announced that its semi-annual AT&T Asia Pacific Group meeting was conducted entirely through Cisco TelePresence suites bringing 21 customers from 15 countries together virtually. As a result, AT&T saved more than $100,000 in travel costs and saved 62 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from avoiding air travel.

Will Thomas, the customer chairman of AT&T's Asia Pacific Regional Advisory Council, said that the meeting served as a positive test case for demonstrating how well telepresence meetings can be put to use.

"Aside from the cost savings we achieved by meeting in this way, we were able to be more productive and improve our work life balance by avoiding the need to travel, as well as reduce the impact on the environment," Thomas said.

This type of meeting is proving to be a growing trend among cost- and environment-conscious businesses. A report out last week from Haddock Research suggested that business travelers would be willing to cut their physical travel by 35 percent or more and use telepresence solutions instead.

The survey asked over 3,000 individuals in the United States, Canada and England about their business travel and telepresence-use habits, and found that the willingness to switch to virtual meetings is highest among American travelers: 35 to 40 percent of Americans' flights , 25 percent of Britons' flights, and 20 percent of Canadians' flights could be replaced by telepresence as the technology becomes more readily available.

Recent news certainly backs up companies' willingness to shift to virtual meetings; last year, Tandberg announced a goal to cut business travel by 10 percent through virtual meetings, while Deloitte signed up with Nortel to spread telepresence across its global operations. At the end of 2008, Wachovia announced that its use of telepresence had saved the firm $1.5 million in costs.

And the growth of telepresence technologies is on the rise; just over a year ago, Cisco announced a TelePresence system for mid-sized businesses, and earlier this week as part of a larger rollout of green initiatives, Hewlett-Packard announced it was developing a telepresence-lite technology called SkyRoom. That new tool aims to bring virtual meeting technology to employees' desks for less than the cost of one cross-country business trip, and is sure to bring telepresence to the masses.

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