Who is the leader of online Telepresence mind-share?

Telepresence isn’t new, the term dates back to the 80’s and the fundamental technology behind it isn’t new either.
The widespread usage of the term, however, is clearly new.
Only in the last few years Telepresence became popular in mainstream media:
This is partly to the fact that major players in the video-conferencing world offers Telepresence solutions, but much more importantly – it’s a direct result of marketing efforts made by them.
But who exactly leads this Telepresence revolution, and who own the digital marketing of the Telepresence industry?

The Contenders

Cisco - One of the world leaders in Networking, Data-Center and Consumer electronics. Cisco Telepresence line introduced in 2006, offers complete room solution with future interoperability through the TIP protocol.
Tandberg - A well established company with video-conferencing products dates back to the 90’s. Tandberg released their Telepresence solution in 2007 and was acquired by Cisco in 2009.
HP – One of the worlds largest IT companies – manufacturer of PC, Printers, Digital cameras, Servers, Software solutions and more – HP “Halo” studio considered one of the first Telepresence solutions and differs from competition by providing not only the hardware, but also the network infrastructure. This makes Halo an expensive (but also very reliable) product.
Polycom – A manufacturer of Video-Conferencing and Audio products, Polycom introduced it’s RPX Telepresence line in 2006.
Teliris – A privately owned company specialized in Telepresence equipment. Teliris delopyed it’s first telepresence solution back in 2001.
DVE – A privately owned company specialized in video-conferencing solutions and known for it’s 3D Telepresence solution – The DVE Immersion Room.
DVE’s first HD telepresence solution dates back to 1999!
Brightcom – Established in 2005, Brightcom manafucture HD & SD Telepresence and Video-conferencing solutions. Brightcom offers its Lumina Telepresence system with screens up to 85inch size.

Results

In this post we are talking about Telepresence Buzz, and how the buzz helps defining the market.
Our “Buzz” rating is based on weekly mentions in online media:
We checked how many times the word Telepresence was mentioned next to each brand to see which Telepresence products are being mentioned over the Internet and how many times. These are the statistics from the the beginning of November (01/11/10 – 07/11/10). We will continue checking these results to see how does new product lines and PR announcements effect each company web-presence.
Not mentioned in this report are Magor and TelepresenceTech, they will be examined however in later articles.

Source: Viralheat.com

First Place – 525 Weekly mentions – Cisco
Cisco knows how to market their products very well and actively seeking to make the word Telepresence known in every household.
The company used descriptive naming and named its Telepresence line -“TelePresence”.
Today, It’s no secret that when people think of Telepresence, Cisco is usually the first name that  comes to mind.
Cisco invests a lot of money in using Telepresence systems for humanitarian aid, distance learning and Telemedicine – They even use Telepresence to broadcast live music events.
The main spotlight for the TelePresence brand however is Television – From CNN to TV series like “24” and “30 Rock”, Cisco’s TelePresece is everywhere.
On the online front, other than maintaining an active telepresence blog, Cisco introduced a Telepresence calculator to help costumers to understand its ROI.
And to set things into proportions – The term “Cisco Telepresence Calculator” itself, is more popular on Google than “Tandberg Telepresence”, for example.
This month, with the announcement of Umi, Cisco made another big step to promote their Telepresence brand.
Umi, which is a home video-conferencing device, was named “Home Telepresence” – It’s safe to assume that Cisco will continue to make efforts to take ownership of the home Telepresence concept – out of the 33,300 Google results for “Home Telepresence”, only 517 does not mention Cisco.
One can say that Cisco tries to own the name “TelePresence” , and thus promote it’s Telepresence brand to the same status as “Coca Cola” or “Rollerblades”.
For now, that works well.

Second Place – 33 Weekly mentions – Polycom
Polycom was once considered the main rival for Tandberg in the Telepresence field, but after Tandberg was acquired by Cisco the situation changed a bit and in order to compete in this new situation Polycom chose to partner with multiple companies such as Microsoft and Juniper. Polycom partnerships create a strong web presence, their name was mentioned multiple times this week in regards to the IBM Unified Communications integration. It seems that the only company that can possibly create as much buzz as Cisco is Polycom, with the help of their business partners.

Third Place – 11 Weekly mentions – Tandberg
Tandberg is now a part of Cisco but they still maintain a web-presence of their own. Tandberg Telepresence products has been recently demonstrated to support TIP and that PR announcement had the most mentions of the Tandberg brand.

The Rest -

HP was one of the first big companies to offer a Telepresence solution and a managed network infrastructure, however it seems that nobody knows about it – or that nobody cares.
While Cisco put product placements at 24, 30 Rock and CSI – HP clearly isn’t a Buzzmaker.
The last PR I’ve read and relates to HP Telepresence was HP partnership with Vidyo to extend it’s visual communications to the desktop level.

BrightCom isn’t as big as the previous companies mentioned, as it’s a privately owned company dealing exclusively with Video-Conferencing and Telepresence.

Teliris and DVE are among the first to deploy Telepresence systems. Both companies are innovative, both offers 3D telepresence solution and both are generally absent from web mentions.

What can we learn from the results?

It’s quite clear that Cisco activly trying to appropriate Telepresence for itself. They began with the use of the term “TelePresence” as their product name and continue with naming Umi as “Home Telpresence”.
Cisco products appear in TV series like 24, CSI, NCIS and 30 Rock – When Telepresence being mentioned in a TV show, it’s probably Cisco’s.
This amount of commitment is absent from industry giants like HP. Budget wise it’s probably not even possible for the smaller competitors – Where does that leave anyone other than Cisco? This is the battle for the Internet, and when Marc Trachtenberg has to explain that he is the “CEO and co-founder of the company that installed the first telepresence solution for business use. Before you even think it – NOOOOO Cisco did NOT start the telepresence industry” – It’s not an easy battle.

In the next posts we’ll examine the Internet footprint of each of the key players, Stay tuned.