TelePresence in Action at Quilt Workshop

At the Quilt's TelePresence Workshop last week in Kansas City, Missouri, NLR was able to participate -- from across the country -- thanks to Cisco TelePresence on the NLR TelePresence Exchange.

TelePresence meeting rooms from as many as six different locations were simultaneously connected to the live event, enabling remote attendees to literally join around the conference table with those on-site and in several cases sparing speakers the need to invest a couple of days' worth of travel for an hour presentation.

Participating were two TelePresence rooms from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (where NLR Vice Chair Wendy Huntoon joined); one from MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network; and at least three from various Cisco offices coast to coast.

First University-Corporate Telepresence Connection across a Research and Education Network

The first university-corporate Cisco TelePresence session through interconnection of a research and education telepresence exchange (National LambdaRail) and a commercial telepresence exchange has taken place. This significantly expands the collaboration potential of the telepresence platform for the academic and research communities.

National LambdaRail (NLR), AT&T and Cisco successfully tested and demonstrated the interconnection of the NLR Telepresence Exchange with the AT&T Telepresence Solution via the AT&T Business Exchange. NLR and AT&T are now working out the details of an ongoing interconnect service enabling additional universities or research organizations with access to NLR and a Cisco TelePresence endpoint to quickly and seamlessly use the AT&T Business Exchange to collaborate with partners in private industry.

The telepresence session involved four separate locations and worked flawlessly. Participating were: Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers from Cisco’s headquarters in San Jose; Bruce Klein, Cisco SVP of Public Sector, from Cisco offices in Herndon, Virginia; and the Duke University leadership team from two locations on the Duke campus in Durham, North Carolina.

NLR’s very excited about the increasing opportunities presented by telepresence for researchers and research groups to collaborate with colleagues around the country and the world – and now with access to the AT&T Business Exchange and to partners in the commercial space. We’ll keep you posted of the new interconnect service as plans firm up.