Managed Telepresence Services: Glowpoint and Telaid Partner Up

Glowpoint-telepresence

Let’s start with the news: Telaid specializes in audio visual communications, network services and security. The company also has a 24×7 support team that services more than 100,000 clients across North America.

Meanwhile, Glowpoint is a publicly held telepresence specialist that has gradually shifted its marketing messages to include “cloud-based managed services for telepresence.” According to a January 6 press release:

For the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2010, Glowpoint’s revenues were $26.875 million, up from $24.464 million the previous year. The company recently announced a reverse stock split, in an attempt to raise its profile and “up-list” from the bulletin board to a national exchange.

Meanwhile, plenty of companies now promote telepresence to MSPs. One recent example involves Vu Telepresence, a video conferencing company closely related to Zenith Infotech. During the Tigerpaw User Conference in October 2010, Vu’s Clinton Gatewood described how the company’s partner program worked. He stated Vu Telepresence was:

I’ve reached out to Vu and Zenith Infotech to see if they have any updates on the Vu Telepresence effort. And we’ll be watching Glowpoint to see how their partner program evolves. We’re also watching to see if Cisco’s consumer telepresence system — dubbed Umi — will jump into the SMB market and the IT channel.

No doubt there are opportunities for MSPs to deploy and manage large-screen, high-def telepresence systems. But I also think Skype Video has disrupted some of the telepresence opportunity, since Skype essentially is ubiquitous and free.

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