The Telepresence Site

So, I’m off to Cisco Live 2012 San Diego in a couple of weeks.

For the uninitiated Cisco Live is the yearly Cisco trade show and educational conference.

I’m lucky.

Since I teach and work on the Cisco TelePresence and some of the Unified Communications courseware for Global Knowledge they foot my bill.

If any of my past students want to get in touch at the event please feel free to follow me on twitter.  I’m @ttrentler.   I’ll be posting stuff I find interesting at the event and will be spending a bit of time manning the Global Knowledge booth.  I’ll tweet when I am there.

What am I looking to get out of the conference.  Well,   …

• I want to find out what a bunch of the undocumented settings are on the video endpoints (what does the capset filter and Audio panning settings control?) I’ve got a “Meet the Engineer” session to find answers to these questions and more.
• I’m attending educational sessions mostly regarding telepresence, video design and MediaNet architectures.
• Looking for product roadmaps and new product introductions.
• This is the place to meet all of Cisco’s third party vendors and play with their products.
• I’m also out of USB memory sticks and expect to pick up a few free ones
• Oh and Weezer is playing the customer appreciation event!

If you can’t attend in person  many of the session will be streamed live and free. Through Cisco Live virtual.

Edit – Here is a link to a better post on why to go to Cisco Live.

Hope to see you there.
Ted

Nice demo / tutorial of How to use a Cisco TelePresence EX90 by IgniteCSG

On of the nice things about doing onsite TelePresence training is that I see all the new toys at my customer sites.

Here I got to go hands on with a MX200.  I really like this endpoint for small conference rooms.

Cisco MX200 unboxes in 15 minutes

Oh e20.  I hardly knew you.

Cisco e20 is off to the digital graveyard

The End of Sale and End of Support dates have been announced for the Cisco E20 phone.  Don’t worry  you still have a bit of time to buy one.

The End of Sale date is October 29th, 2012  Here is a link to the announcement

From my point of view this sort of makes sense.  Cisco has been rapidly upgrading all of the new Tandberg endpoints to support direct registration with Cisco Unified Communications manager.  If we are using CUCM for call control in the future Cisco has low end 8900 and 9900 series video phones (Low end as far as video screen size) as well as the ex60 and ex90 to act as personal video endpoints.

I don’t know if the e20 every really caught on.  My impression is that it was a relatively fragile endpoint AND the PC presentation button never has been supported on the unit.  I also get better camera quality using jabber video with my PC’s webcam.

The Cisco TelePresence Management Suite version 13.2 is now available!

New Features:
- Auto-extend scheduled conferences
- Enable HTTPS access to the Cisco TMS Website (Windows 2008)
- Add Cisco Unified CM-registered endpoints running TE and TC software to Cisco TMS
- Secure-only support for endpoints running TE software
- Send DTMF when scheduling with Cisco TelePresence Server
- TC5 and CTS native call routing
- De-select subfolders when creating TMS Endpoints phone book source
- Booking API services now available without licenses
- TMS Provisioning 2.0 and support for TMS Provisioning Extension 1.0 (VCS X7.1 Required)

Link to TMS 13.2 (and release notes):

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283613664&softwareid=280886992&release=13.2&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest&i=rm

Link to TMS Provisioning Extension:

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=284330317&flowid=32362&softwareid=280886992&release=1.00&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=lates

Thanks again to my friend Mustafa for the heads up!

I find this video amusing

Cisco CTS500, e20,c90,cius,8945

This replaces the WebEx Connect IM client.

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=284324806&catid=278875240&softwareid=284006014&release=9.0(1)&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

Thanks for the heads up Mustafa!

Cisco Jabber Video 4.4 is out! – Release Notes t.co/e98EYi1h // Downloads t.co/SXAPREmY

The TX9000 now has a little brother.

Cisco Telepresence TX1300

Here is the Product Link

There are two versions.

the TX1310 65, featuring a 65-inch screen, and the TX1300 47 with a 47-inch screen.

An alert reader sent me this link http://www.cisco.com/web/RO/ciscoexpo/2012/pdfs/Cisco_Telepresence_Solution_Powersession.pdf

It shows a new Tactical mil spec TelePresence Endpoint is in the works by Cisco and should be released this summer if all goes according to plan.

This looks like a great replacement to the old Tandberg Tactical MXP that is now end of sale.

VMware support is here for the Cisco VCS on Cisco supported servers!

Below is a list of new features in VCS version 7.1 from the release notes

The software is available for download from Cisco.com with an active support contract.

Cisco Telepresence VCS cluster

New features in X7

X7.1

TMS Provisioning Extension support

VCS X7.1 supports the Provisioning Extension mode introduced into Cisco TMS v13.2.

In X7.0 and earlier, the provisioning, FindMe and phonebook services on the VCS were provided by the legacy TMS Agent module. From X7.1, the new Provisioning Extension services mechanism supports large-scale deployments and provides a more flexible upgrade path for both VCS and Cisco TMS.

You are recommended to switch from using the TMS Agent legacy mode to the new Provisioning Extension mode as soon as is practicable.

Call processing

 Improved interworking between VCS and Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). VCS now always stays in the call signaling route for calls to neighbor zones that are configured with the Cisco Unified Communications Manager or the Infrastructure device zone profiles.

Virtual appliance support

•   The VCS can run on VMware on Cisco UCS C200 M2, UCS C210 M2, or UCS B200 M2 servers.
•   See Cisco VCS Virtual Machine Deployment Guide for installation instructions.

  Other enhancements and usability improvements

•   Improved status reporting of NTP server synchronization.
•   The lower and upper source ports in the range used for sending DNS queries can now be

  configured on the DNS page.

•   Automatically uploaded CRL files are now included when checking the validity of client certificates on the Client certificate testing page.
•   System snapshot:
  • The snapshot process now runs in the background. This means you can navigate away from

    the snapshot page and return to it later to download the generated snapshot file.

  • Snapshot filenames are distinct for each type of snapshot.
•   Default incident reporting server is now https://cc-reports.cisco.com/submitapplicationerror/
•   The VCS Starter Pack Express supports device provisioning for MX200 endpoints.
•   An optional free-form description of a B2BUA transcoder can be specified.
•   Alarms status page now shows when an alarm was first raised.
•   The VCS web interface now supports Internet Explorer 7, 8 or 9, Firefox 3 or later, or Chrome. Later versions of these browsers may also work, but are not officially supported.

Here is a Link to OJ’s keynote at Enterprise Connect.  Nice to see Cisco showing off Show and Share with this video.

This is the new Product Announcement for the Cisco TX9000 Telepresence unit and new Jabber Clients.

CIsco announced Jabber for iPad today at Enterprise Connect 2012.

It is not yet in the App Store but should be available next quarter.

Here is Jabber to a TX9000!

Cisco TelePresence TX9000

So today I drove out from Tampa, Florida to Orlando to attend Enterprise Connect 2012.  I happen to have a week at home which is rare considering the demand for Cisco TelePresence training these days.  (I’m a CiscoTelepresence Certified Systems Instructor and teach with Global Knowledge).

The Keynote speaker this morning was OJ Winge.   OJ is the Senior Vice President for Cisco’s TelePresence Technology Group and a former Tandberg exec. I was impressed by the keynote.  In fact I think OJ successfully channeled Steve Jobs.  I don’t say this lightly.  Even though there was no one more thing… at the end of his presentation, he gets technology in the post PC era.  His message was simple -

“The user experience matters most, We don’t care what device you use”

He then went on to demonstrate a TelePresence meeting with a variety of endpoints including an iPad, CTS Suite, EX90 and a Polycom endpoint.  He also talked about the transformative effect of TelePresence and its ability to easily deliver nuances that you just can’t get from a phone call or email exchange.  During his presentation he announced several new additions to the Cisco Jabber video portfolio as well as the TX9000 immersive suite. As soon as the keynote was over  I journeyed to the exhibit floor where Cisco seemed to have the largest booth space of all.

Cisco Booth at Enterprise Connect 2012

I was able to get into the suite rather quickly.  My initial impression is this,

Cisco has successfully taken the best of the Tandberg T3 immersive suites and combined it with the best of the Cisco CTS suites.

 Cisco and Tandberg TelePresence is now over five years old  so it is time for an upgraded endpoint to become available.

Let me highlight some of the features of the Cisco TX9000. . .

It has four integrated codecs.  One codec for each of the three 65″ plasma screens.  The fourth codec is dedicated strictly for content sharing.  Yes really.  Oh and as far as content there is a fourth LCD monitor for content in the center on the floor, but by using the touch screen you can easily drag and drop content and participants from monitor to monitor.  Cisco also introduced the ability to collaborate by using the touch screen to annotate content that is being shared live.

The room has the more personal feeling of a T3 suite but has moved camera placement to a central cluster of cameras as in the CTS rooms.  I believe this provides for a better far end representation of participants than the T3 suite was able to provide.  Audio speaker placement is now integrated along the top of the unit which I find keeps you looking face to face during the meeting rather that down at the speaker output as on previous systems.  It seems there is a great attention to detail in this room.  The microphones which are integrated into the cherry wood desk feature a beveled grill.  When asked about this I was told that the bevel is just there to dissuade people from placing there laptops over the microphones.  I like that detail, subtle and not in your face.

Lighting for the room has changed significantly from the T3 and CTS suites.  Gone is the backlit blue wall that was a feature of the T3 as well as the white lit sconce that provided foreground lighting for the CTS suite.  Cisco has introduced integrated LED lighting at the top of the displays that shines on a custom textured white wall background to apply proper foreground lighting of conference participants.

TX9000 integrated lighting

During my demo we established a 1080P point to point call between Orlando and Reston, VA. with content sharing( A full motion video with audio) at about 19MB of bandwidth. All in all I think this is a great addition to Cisco’s portfolio and in one move straight out of Steve Jobs’s book,  They announced it starts shipping next week.  Yes this endpoint actually can be ordered starting April 1st.  I’m told the price point is the same as the previous CTS-3100.

Below is a video walk thru from Cisco of the TX9000.

Cisco Demo Time

At enterprise connect Cisco has just introduced the TX9000 immersive telepresence suite. It look like a bigger badder Tandberg T3 suite, but with a hidden central camera cluster and more collaborative capabilities.

Can’t wait to get into the demo suite later today!

I’m at Enterprise Connect in Orlando Fl today. Anxiously awaiting new Telepresence product announcements