BT Conferencing Company Profile
Company Headquartered: London UK
Company Founded: began commercial telegraph operations in 1846, telecommunications was nationalized in 1969, British Telecom was privatized in 1984.
Public / Private: BT Conferencing is a unit of BT Retail, part of the BT Group - [LSE: BT Group, NYSE (ADS): BT]
Key Executives:
- CEO BT Conferencing - Aaron McCormack
- General Manager, Video Business Unit - Jeff Prestel
Resellers / Distributors:
Key Customers: multinational companies, particularly in the pharmaceutical and financial services industries.
BT Conferencing was established over 20 years ago and has quickly grown as a leading global provider of audio, video and web collaboration services. Year on year growth has seen the company out-perform the conferencing industry expectation. BT Conferencing is the largest conferencing provider in the UK and Europe with reach extending across more than 55 countries.
With operations centered in the USA, western Europe and Asia Pacific, BT Conferencing specializes in the delivery of reliable, robust and innovative conferencing solutions to some of the largest companies in the world including 80% of the Financial Times 100 and 20 of the Fortune 50 companies. BT Conferencing coordinates 40% of the investor relations calls for the Fortune 500 companies.
BT Conferencing provides exchange service, telepresence managed services, and deployment services. These services include well regarded concierge services, reservation services, network operations services. The most important component of its offer is the video operating system "Onward" which includes capabilities for automatic session launch and operator assist, tools for measuring and reporting operational status of facilities, network devices and proactive responses to faults or alarms in progress. The company has a well architected initiative for internal marketing and user education to stimulate service awareness and session demand.
Included are comprehensive tools for monitoring demand, scheduling and operational satisfaction. With a Video Operations Center in both the USA and UK, BT Conferencing launches more than 60,000 video conferencing calls per year
Support for both ISDN and IP bridging are provided through BT Conferencing's own MCU infrastructure and those hosted for customers directly.
BT is certified as a Cisco Advanced Technology Partner for telepresence globally.
The company's heritage as a specialty offering of a national telecommunications service provider enables an end-to-end solutions-focus that transcends the lifecycle of the implementation, masking complexity wherever possible and engineering and managing services for high availability.
As a leading Telepresence Managed Service provider IP networking and inter-connection provider, BT Conferencing offers a number of solutions for telepresence and real-time videoconferencing deployments:
Video conferencing solutions - BT Conferencing offers a number of solutions, including ISDN and IP networks, hardware from leading manufacturers and multimedia room systems.
Maintenance & support - BT Conferencing offers comprehensive support for your video conferencing and telepresence infrastructure.
Managed Services - Enterprise Managed Services from BT Conferencing offer a proactive and cost-effective approach to maintaining and monitoring your video conferencing environment, ensuring that your system is always ready when you need it.
Equipment solutions - Whether you need equipment for an office, small conference room, classroom or an executive boardroom, BT Conferencing can help you choose the right system for your meetings.
Telepresence-Telepresence gives you the ability to communicate with real-life clarity, accurate color, and high-quality voice response.
Management tools-BT Conferencing's management tools provide easy to use, simple solutions for managing all of your video conferencing requirements.
BT Global Exchange
BT's Global Video Exchange is an inter-connection service for real-time telepresence and videoconferencing traffic that allows enterprise, carrier, and telepresence and videoconferencing managed service providers to securely connect to their supply chain partners, vendors, and customers on disparate networks while maintaining the Quality-of-Service required for real-time telepresence and videoconferencing.
Key Technical Specifics:
- Telepresence Systems Supported: BT Conferencing is vendor agnostic and supports Teliris, Tandberg, Polycom and Cisco implementations today.
- MCU / Gateway Platforms Supported: Polycom Videoconferencing, Tandberg, Videoconferencing, Radvision Videoconferencing, Cisco Telepresence
- Network Connectivity: MPLS, ISDN, Internet
- Telepresence Community of Interest Network (CoIN) or Exchange: Yes- Cisco Only
Telepresence Options Analysis:
BT Conferencing supports a wide variety of telepresence and videoconferencing endpoints with managed service options supported from global network operations centers in the US and the UK. The company under the leadership of Aaron McCormack has been making shrewd investments in telepresence and videoconferencing capabilities. In April 2008 the company acquired WireOne Communications, one of the most capable telepresence and videoconferencing managed service providers in the industry. The company has invested in demonstration centers where prospective clients can check out multiple telepresence systems head-to-head. BT has been at the forefront of inter-company telepresence demonstrating inter-company, inter-network capabilities with Cisco TelePresence and rolling out a telepresence exchange offering in BT Global Exchange. And to top it all off they have a CEO that surfs.
