Cisco's rare move to embrace interoperability

My colleague David Meyer reported today on Cisco's move to create interoperability between its high-end video conferencing systems, called TelePresence, and video conferencing systems from other vendors.

It's early days to establish just how many systems Telepresence will interoperate with - Cisco says it'll be all major systems - but this is a good step in the right direction for a company which has never really favoured interoperability with other vendors' products.

Cisco has of course boasted huge market share in most of the markets in which it operates, and so it could easily view interoperability as a quick way to lose market share.

So what are its reasons for introducing interoperability for Telepresence? Could it be the potential to open up a larger market by allowing IT professionals to mix-and-match video conferencing systems successfully? Or could it be that Cisco simply is not selling enough of them in a proprietary state?

Each three-screen Telepresence system (the larger model of the two on offer) costs around £150,000 per site, which sounds a huge cost inhibitor for most potential customers.

But Cisco did say today that, one year after the system's formal launch, it had sold TelePresence to 100 customers, spread across 40 countries.

One of its marquee customers, Cisco said, is Proctor and Gamble, the chocolate-to-sanitary towels multinational, which has bought 40 of the products.

TelePresence has "the potential to transform traditional work and travel habits," said Proctor & Gamble's director of strategic products Laurie Heltsey. "It allows us to really 'be there' without leaving here."

I've tested TelePresence and it's undoubtedly one of the best video conferencing experiences I've had.

Whether it's worth money like that is another thing, but at least now users shouldn't experience Cisco lock-in.