As more and more customers deploy Microsoft's OCS, they are asking videoconferencing companies to help interconnect their products with their shiny new unified communications systems. But it isn't just video integration these companies want… These clients also want interconnection with telepresence.

Many large multinational companies in financial and manufacturing are asking for this integration according to Tandberg CTO Hakon Dahle.

The company started embracing OCS this past January and it is seeing traction now and is a shipping product according to Dahle.

He went on to tell me that the telepresence market is also doing well - both personal and room-based. To differentiate themselves in this space, the company is not just focusing on quality but interoperability via standard protocols and codecs. Tandberg is allowing telepresence connectivity to OCS clients and executive desktops in order to allow broader use of this high-quality videoconferencing technology.

Dahle predicts that in the next few years, HD will be everywhere and UC will be tightly integrated with video. Furthermore we will see more use of mobile video.

He thinks that other vendors see the need to open their telepresence solutions and further offer personal telepresence.

If you are looking for a definition of personal telepresence it means very high quality audio and video in a relatively small room connected to telepresence rooms.

I asked Dahle if he thinks the bandwidth for video is finally here and he said it is becoming available but he said "You need to be flexible, allowing calls to be placed at lower bandwidths if someone is at a home office, on DSL, etc."

And this is precisely where Tandberg sees their solutions as different from the competition… They are flexible with regards to network requirements.

It certainly does seem like a good time to be in the videoconferencing business as corporations are deploying not only UC but telepresence. It is great to see that Tandberg is focusing on bringing these someone disparate solutions together, allowing UC solutions to be truly unified.