5/13/2008 -- Cisco Systems Inc. this week unveiled a duo of new telephony offerings, including a new "personal" Cisco TelePresence system (the TelePresence System 500) which it says is designed for individual offices. Cisco also announced the TelePresence System 3200, a new "room" offering that it says is designed for group training- and team meeting-type scenarios.

Cisco's new TelePresence deliverables buttress its existing offerings, the TelePresence System 1000 and 3000 endpoints.

Cisco touts its TelePresence 500 as a game-changing deliverable. Officials say that the new TelePresence 500 -- which is packaged in a smaller form-factor than Cisco's larger TelePresence offerings -- offers the same experience (i.e., "life-size, face-to-face" interaction) as its bigger brethren. With its built-in 37-inch display, camera, microphone and other accoutrements, Cisco said, the TelePresence 500 offers small- to medium-sized companies a relatively inexpensive entrée into telepresence -- giving them an affordable means to facilitate virtual interactions with partners, customers or suppliers.

The TelePresence 3200 is a larger proposition altogether. It offers triple the room capacity of its predecessor, the TelePresence 3000, and boasts a larger virtual "table" that can accommodate a second row of seating. With its larger screen and enhanced collaborative features (including beefed-up camera lenses and microphones for second-row participants), the TelePresence 3200 delivers real-time audio and video to a room full of conference attendees, regardless of whether they're sitting in the front or the rear ranks.

According to TelePresence VP and general manager Charles Stucki, Cisco's new offerings address a pressing need in many organizations, namely virtual interaction and collaboration. It isn't just a pipedream, Stucki said, and -- with skyrocketing travel and fuel expenses -- organizations are giving offerings such as TelePresence a long second look.

"Video is rapidly becoming the most effective way to communicate and share information," Stucki said in a statement. "TelePresence is much more than video. TelePresence puts you into the meeting in every important sense. With our recent developments in intercompany and interoperability with video conferencing and an expanded portfolio of solutions, we've dramatically increased the uses for and value of TelePresence. This will help accelerate the proliferation across organizations of all sizes."

The new TelePresence deliverables buttress a bevy of improvements that Cisco has made to the TelePresence architecture itself. Cisco says TelePresence can now scale to support up to 48 different sites in a single meeting. --Stephen Swoyer