Tata Communications Launches Telepresence Services Worldwide

First Provider to Launch Public and Private Cisco TelePresence Rooms Internationally

SINGAPORE . - Tata Communications (NYSE: TCL) announced the launch of its Telepresence services, the first ever offering to deliver both private and public Cisco TelePresence rooms to businesses across the world. This groundbreaking service will enable a broader ecosystem of connected rooms for enterprises and their partners.

Telepresence provides life-like, high definition conferencing facilities with superior audio, video and environmental qualities to provide a viable alternative to traditional face-to-face meetings. Businesses can achieve substantial cost savings through reducing travel while accelerating productivity, and improving long-distance collaboration and decision making In addition, they can significantly increase employee satisfaction with this “smart technology” by enabling executives to have meetings in the comfort of their own offices. Telepresence also promotes environmental benefits, such as decreased CO2 emission from reduction in travel.

“Tata Communications is committed to offering its worldwide customers innovative, cost-effective and efficient ways to conduct their business,” said Vinod Kumar, President, Global Data and Mobility Solutions, Tata Communications. “Through our unique combined public and private room model, we are bringing our customers access to a unique ”in-person“ experience to enhance their global real-time collaboration.”

Tata Communications’ complete portfolio of Cisco-certified TelePresence network and managed services offers companies a reliable, highly secure and easy-to-use facility. Tata Communications’ global network and carrier relationships will allow it to grow Cisco TelePresence interconnections. Tata Communications lowers costs of implementation of its Telepresence Exchange Services for customers by offering managed infrastructure in the network cloud. The Telepresence managed service includes a concierge service that takes care of reservations, scheduling, customer support, monitoring, management, reporting and billing capabilities, making it easy for customers to deploy and manage a highly effective collaboration tool.

“Cisco TelePresence is revolutionizing the communications universe, giving people the power to collaborate in ways that didn’t even exist just a few short years ago,” said Rajesh Chainani, vice president of Service Provider for Cisco India & SAARC. “Tata Communications has developed a highly innovative service offering that will add considerable value to its business and that of its customers. The Cisco TelePresence solution will help Tata Communications’ clients improve existing business processes, speed time-to-market for developing new products and services, and help scale valuable resources.”

Tata Communications has implemented Cisco TelePresence in several of its offices and that of other Tata Group companies in various geographies. Tata Communications is also making available Cisco TelePresence services at public rooms that businesses can rent on an hourly basis. This unique offering will not only create a larger network effect of interconnected rooms but also expand the market considerably to small and mid-sized businesses. The first phase of the public rooms are located at the Taj Hotels and in major business centers around the world including Mumbai, Bangalore, New York, Boston and London.

Tata Communications is also collaborating with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India’s premier business association, to provide Cisco TelePresence services to Indian businesses with four public rooms at CII offices in New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. Vikram Tiwathia, CIO of CII commented, “Telepresence will transform the way geographically-dispersed global teams work by offering a viable virtual meeting solution for all enterprises in India.”

“This new flavour of telepresence is an interesting one. Tata Communications distinguishes itself from other flavours of Telepresence by the hosting element of the proposition, reducing the complexity on site and the cost to manage these applications,” said David Molony, Principal Analyst at Ovum. “Equipment costs may still prohibitive for some enterprises, but Tata Communications is bringing a different business case to the table by introducing a hosted service, representing a new option for a more affordable managed telepresence solution.”