Orange Business Services has signed an agreement with Cisco to offer free trials of Telepresence Community, a service providing direct access to Cisco's 800 private and public telepresence rooms and 27 companies already connected via Cisco worldwide. The B2B service trials are available to Orange customers and those of other operators until 1 April 2011, free of charge and without any commitment. The initiative will create a 'global video community', said OBS's senior vice president for global communication services, Marc Blanchet. The operator's telepresence network is certified by Cisco in 46 countries and is accessible in 140 countries in total. OBS said it was actively seeking partnerships with several global operators to help customers maximise their return on investment in telepresence. One such deal was signed to enable an OBS pharmaceuticals client to connect to a business partner with another operator. Blanchard said the company aimed to have at least three major interconnection agreements in place by the end of the year. In parallel, OBS is working on pooling telepresence infrastructure in hosted and managed mode to offer cloud-based telepresence as a service. OBS's expertise in managed services has been recognised by its award of a Cisco Managed Services Master Certification Worldwide. OBS said it saw a doubling of telepresence calls to tender between the second quarters of 2009 and 2010 as companies increasingly choose videoconferencing to reduce travel costs, ensure business continuity in the event of a natural disaster (such as the volcanic ash cloud) or reduce their carbon footprint.
