BT Conferencing gains Cisco TelePresence partner status

As BT (NYSE: BT) Conferencing continues to get a bigger piece of the growing telepresence market, gaining TelePresence Video Master Authorized Technology Provider (ATP) status from Cisco shows that the service provider is moving to provide a full service package to its wide-reaching enterprise clientele.

BT Conferencing can now sell, deploy and support Cisco's TelePresence Video platform at the Master level. The designation can also be a selling point to illustrate to customers in its home market and its growing base of international markets, including its recent EMEA and Turkey expansion effort, that it can deploy the Cisco video endpoint suite.  

Telepresence overall has become a trend that BT overall has been expanding in recent years through key relations with vendors and other service provider partners.

Complementing its efforts with Cisco, the service provider has been active in establishing key service provider relationships to bridge the so-called islands of telepresence connectivity.

Among those relationships are a recently established partnership with Verizon that will enable both of their respective enterprise customers to conduct video conferencing sessions with one another using Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO) TelePresence solutions.

Of course, the question becomes what about providing support for other telepresence solutions? Marc Hambley, senior product manager, BT Conferencing, previously told FierceTelecom that while the BT/Verizon partnership, for example, will initially support Cisco, they will add support for other vendors' solutions over time.

For more:
- see the release

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