Telepresence. These systems are beautiful, exciting, and so insanely expensive that even Fortune 100 companies can’t afford to put them where their employees do their work.
I had to take a three hour train ride, each way, to get to our closest telepresence system and participate in the discussion!
I heard that the other day, and simply had to chuckle. Organizations are being sold on the “in-person” experience of telepresence, and the resulting increase in employee productivity while also reducing travel budgets. Yet, these systems are so expensive ($500,000.00 or more, per room, plus monthly recurring fees to support the network infrastructure and maintenance of these complex systems), that even the largest corporations can’t afford to put them in each of their regional offices. The scarcity of these systems in large corporations is rendering them counter-productive, and actually increasing the amount of travel for some employees like the one I referenced above. The fact that employees in the field, strategic partners, and customers can’t participate in these experiences is just further insult-to-injury.
For the bitter employee above, there is a happy ending to the story given their investments with ConnectSolutions and our desktop-based web collaboration tools. 
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