In an Australian first, Telstra today launched Business to Business TelePresence, giving Australian organisations the ability to collaborate with each other using Telstra's Cisco TelePresence Managed Service.

Telstra Business to Business Cisco TelePresence means organisations will be able to bring other businesses together in a single, face to face, virtual meeting room, as opposed to intracompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration within the boundaries of one organisation.



Paul McManus, Executive Director of National Sales for Telstra Enterprise & Government said the new Business to Business TelePresence service operated on the Telstra Next IP (TM) network and would help organisations further reduce travel costs, shorten cycle time, improve decision making and help reduce their carbon footprint.

"Business to Business TelePresence is set to provide a real productivity boost to Australian organisations, as they will now be able to communicate via Telstra Cisco TelePresence with their customer networks, partners and supply chain and use the service to make decisions faster, reduce costs, simplify collaboration and importantly help to meet sustainability targets," Mr McManus said. "The ability to use ultra-high definition video will accelerate these benefits even further."

David Barker, Director of the Telstra Alliance for Cisco, said: "We are very pleased to be working closely with Telstra to enable more businesses to effortlessly connect with customers, partners and suppliers from all over the country in a way that feels like participants are across the table. Cisco TelePresence enables organisations to improve productivity and reduce expenses while at the same time enabling them to collaborate without boundaries and improve business innovation."

Philip Jones, Executive Director, Telstra Product Management said the new Business to Business TelePresence service is the second enhanced Cisco TelePresence capability to be offered to the market.

"This service complements our exiting fully managed Telstra Cisco Telepresence solution, providing customers with end-to-end management across our Next IPâ„¢ network and across enterprise boundaries. During the next 18 months Telstra will continue to enhance our customer offering with opex based charging models and network based one touch scheduling making it easier to connect intercompany meetings across Australia" he said.

"Business to Business TelePresence represents the latest milestone in Cisco and Telstra's alliance to provide one-click, one-touch, one-screen solutions plus advanced services such as installation, full monitoring and management of the application, remote help desk service and on-site equipment maintenance for rapid customer deployments."

Telstra Business to Business TelePresence will be charged on a simple recurring monthly fee on a twelve month contract that covers service activation and assurance, as well as access to Telstra's world-leading Next IPâ„¢ network on an unlimited use basis.

Announced in November 2008, the Cisco and Telstra alliance is designed to deliver a managed services platform to customers that enables Telstra to deploy advanced technologies such as Cisco Unified Communications and Cisco TelePresence. It comes at a time when both Cisco and Telstra are entering into a new collaborative business model designed to drive market growth and foster adoption of advanced technologies in the market place.