Visium checks out new innovations with Ted Baillieu

Hot on the heels of our Zoom Video launch, Visium was excited to receive an invite to the launch of Telstra’s Customer Experience Center.

Along with a selection of leading IT companies, Visium enjoyed a first hand glimpse of life the NBN world thanks to a shiny new facility designed to support and shape the telecommunications decisions of Victorian businesses now and into the future.

Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu cut the ‘virtual’ ribbon along with Telstra CEO David Thodey by pointing some lasers on a massive wall display. This kicked off a multi-media show that depicted a networked Australia.

After the formalities, guests were shown through an entire floor of 242 Exhibition street decked out as mock businesses, board rooms and lounge rooms of the future.

In attendance was Visium’s Michael Brown who snuck out a few photos with his trusty iPhone (Don’t tell the Telstra PR guys) – Here the Premier and Mr Thodey check out a new iPad app that virtualises what you look at. The app lets you tour a bare bones facility and look around the room as if it was fitted out with furniture, partitions offices etc. This certainly captured imaginations and might help avoid some costly fit out mistakes in the future:

Next up was a teleconferencing round table that allows you to see others in other states or countries. With the push of a button you can train an overhead camera on the document you are working on allowing others can see your handy work in real time . This sort of thing has been around for a while, though is dropping rapidly in cost (both for the fit out, and the broadband required to run it)

Teleconferencing got a big showing with this next fit out by Polycom – The gentlemen on the other side of the table was in a similar fit out in Sydney, as he got up and walked around and as he spoke, the 3D surround sound tracked to his on screen location. A very natural meeting experience and impressive stuff (if you have a spare $500K x 2)

Beyond all sorts of streaming video, the other big future tech is cloud computing. The ‘Cloud’ is just a nice marketing buzz word for computer processing done offsite (like in a Telstra data center) – Back in your business you work on low-cost, low-power thin clients. ‘Thin Client’ is more marketing jargon for what is just a stripped down computer.  There are other benefits of running your computing in the cloud  – if you move between computers at work, home or on the move, you only have to maintain one virtual computer – an exact replica with exactly the same programs and data available where ever you are allowing you to pick up where you left off with great speed.

That’s a short glimpse of the exciting new technology being showcased by Telstra at 242 Londsdale St Melbourne.

UPDATE: Visium is arranging a couple of private tours for early September – numbers will be limited so if you are interested to attend please e-mail rsvp@visium.com.au