India’s Tata Communications, together with nine global service providers, announced the launch of the Global Meeting Alliance™, an open ecosystem of leading telecom providers that have teamed up to interconnect their respective business video communities.
The launch represents the largest functioning global collaboration between service providers in business video services. The members of the alliance include Safaricom in Africa, Telstra in Australia, Etisalat, Qtel and Mobily in the Middle East, Neotel in South Africa and Sprint, Glowpoint and TELUS in North America.
“Tata Communications continues to demonstrate its commitment to facilitating an open, global ecosystem that moves business video from an intracompany experience to a collaboration tool with worldwide reach. The Global Meeting Alliance is central to this strategy, and today, all alliance members are taking a major step towards making an open community for business video a reality,” Peter Quinlan, Vice President (Integrated Business Video Services) at Tata Communications, stated.
The Global Meeting Alliance network allows any service provider to connect to enterprises and institutions on all major continents, irrespective of service provider (participating service providers only), following a similar business model to the airline alliance networks.
Leveraging Tata Communications’ industry-leading number of inter-carrier agreements, customers of the Global Meeting Alliance members now have access to an international Telepresence network of 3rd party video endpoints, as well as the largest global public Telepresence room network consisting of 40 public Telepresence suites in 22 countries, the company informed.
In addition, the community will engage in a collaborative approach to solve shared-industry challenges with the central objective of making business video available globally, simple to connect and affordable for all, Tata Communications claimed.
“This is a major step forward for the video conferencing industry and its customers,” Andrew W. Davis, Senior Partner and Co-Founder of Wainhouse Research, said.
“By making B2B calls easier and by interconnecting different carriers, the Global Meeting Alliance will drive the usage of videoconferencing and Telepresence systems, enabling customers to see faster and higher returns on their investments. With its history of wholesale network services, inter-carrier experience, and public room support, Tata Communications is in a unique position to launch this alliance,” Davis added.
According to Tata Communications, this alliance will simplify the launch and operation of business video worldwide, making it more affordable and enabling service providers to optimize their regional networks to interconnect with a global network and conferencing infrastructure maintained by the Global Meeting Alliance operator.
What members said:
Sprint is excited to participate in the Global Meeting Alliance initiative. With the tremendous growth in business video, Sprint is committed to leveraging the Global Meeting Alliance and its open ecosystem foundation to deliver the benefits of a rich global collaboration experience to our customers – Mike McRoberts, Director of Product Management, Sprint.
Being part of the Global Meeting Alliance is an honour, and it will also provide significant value to our customers. We know customers want to extend their reach with video and collaborate with customers and key partners globally. Participating in the Global Meeting Alliance will position us to grow our OpenVideo™ community and provide business-to-business exchange services that enable businesses to build communities of interest and get more out of their investment in video – Joe Laezza, Chief Executive Officer, Glowpoint.
Many Canadian businesses rely on International communications to maintain their competitive edge, be it with their remote offices, with suppliers and/or customers. They look to TELUS to provide the comprehensive collaboration solution that their businesses need. As a member of the Global Meeting Alliance, TELUS is able to maximise the value that we provide to our customers by greatly increasing their business-to-business collaboration options – Tony Krueck, Vice President, Business Products & Services, TELUS.
Telstra is proud to be the exclusive Australian partner in the Global Meeting Alliance. Telepresence and business video services are becoming increasingly popular with Australian organisations as they offer significant productivity and cost benefits while enabling more collaborative working practices. We expect this demand to rise substantially in 2012 and beyond. Telstra’s customers expect simple, reliable and cost effective services and our participation in the Global Meeting Alliance will assist in meeting their expectations – Philip Jones, Executive Director, Data IP Network Application & Services, Telstra.
Saudi Arabia is home to many global companies that need to interact with different offices, partners and customers around the globe. Mobily’s participation in the Global Meeting Alliance provides these organisations options to leverage business video to enhance this collaboration – Dr. Marwan Al Al Ahmdai, CBO, Mobily.
By being part of the Global Meeting Alliance, our services seamlessly and conveniently allow enterprises to conduct meetings with individuals and groups in any part of the world without being physically present, helping to reduce travel costs and enhance productivity, while improving employee quality of life – Kennedy Ojunga, Manager, Virtual Collaboration Services, Safaricom.
