For years, David Suzuki made annual trips to Australia, one of his favourite places, where the Canadian environmentalist also happens to have a large following. As well, he frequently lectured overseas and flew at least monthly to Toronto.
Three years ago, he realized just how much pollution he was causing when he read that a round trip from Toronto to London spews a tonne of carbon into the atmosphere. Since then, the 73-year-old founder of the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation has been trying to replace airplanes with a cleaner technology: video-conferencing.
Using a facility at the University of British Columbia, he's been making video presentations around the world without leaving his hometown - including an appearance screened simultaneously at four different campuses of a Melbourne university.
In December, his foundation will go further, installing TelePresence, a high-end video-conferencing system from Cisco Systems that mimics an in-person meeting. "When I saw TelePresence," Mr. Suzuki says, "the illusion was very real. The people seemed to be right there. Now I turn down 95 per cent of [travel] requests."
A green icon like Mr. Suzuki has a unique need to maintain a small environmental footprint, but businesses are increasingly taking similar measures, driven by the desire to cut travel costs and save employee time as much as be good to the Earth.
A December, 2008, report on "green IT" from Gartner Inc. points out that in some organizations, such as large global consultancies, business travel can produce nearly 50 per cent of the company's total greenhouse gas emissions.
But other reasons are keeping staff home, the authors note. "Congestion, pollution, security and health concerns have combined to make business travel increasingly inefficient and unpleasant."
All these factors have boosted corporate purchases of video-conferencing systems over the past three to four years, says Gartner analyst Scott Morrison, adding 150,000 to 200,000 endpoints (or video-conference rooms) per year.
Over that time, products have emerged - such as Cisco's TelePresence and Hewlett-Packard's Halo - that offer an immersive experience, making users feel as though they're in the same place as the people to whom they're speaking. To create the illusion, vendors don't just provide the equipment but outfit entire rooms on client sites with uniform lighting, paint and furniture.
"Seventy per cent of all communication is non-verbal," says Nitin Kawale, president of Cisco Systems Canada Co., "and if the quality isn't there, you can't do it [effectively]."
During a demonstration of TelePresence in Cisco's downtown Toronto office, the press of a button brought up two employees from Ottawa on three giant screens. "We just went to Ottawa," Mr. Kawale says. "We are in Ottawa."
Multinational companies such as Cisco find video-conferencing cost-effective - even at the cost of $35,000 to $350,000 per endpoint. The adoption is driven by executives, Mr. Morrison says, "who do a test run, love it and see it as a way of avoiding travel."
But use is spreading beyond the corner offices. "If you put this technology in smart people's hands, they'll find ways to change how they do business," Mr. Kawale says.
The biggest adopters of high-end video-conferencing are financial services giants, whose investment bankers "need to see the whites of people's eyes" when doing deals, Mr. Morrison says.
Manufacturers with far-off plants use it, as do knowledge industries such as health care, big pharma and high tech.
Still, business video-conferencing adoption has lagged behind the hype. The immersive systems are only a niche success, Mr. Morrison says. As of the end of 2008, only 2,200 rooms had been installed by clients globally.
Cost is a major reason. A TelePresence or Halo room costs an average of $200,000, but that's just a start. Add dedicated high-end networks needed to transmit the video, plus the ongoing maintenance and services of a technician on call, and companies can expect to pay $600,000 per room over a four-year period, Mr. Morrison estimates.
