Glowpoint, Tata Team Up for Communications Services

Glowpoint, a managed video services provider, today announced a partnership program with Tata Communications to extend connectivity to their respective customer communities. The program, announced at the InfoCOMM2010 conference in Las Vegas, provides extended global connectivity and improved interoperability across a wide range of endpoints to customers utilizing Glowpoint's managed service offerings and Telepresence interExchange Network (TEN) and Tata Communications' Global Meeting Exchange.

The partnership will pair Glowpoint's expertise in providing collaborative managed video service offerings with Tata Communications' Cisco Telepresence Exchange and managed services to jointly offer a suite of integrated business video services with enchanced functionality and interoperability for customers. Together, Glowpoint and Tata Communications will ensure seamless interconnection capabilities, enabling their respective global customer bases to connect and collaborate, regardless of physical location, network connection or endpoint equipment.

"The value of collaboration to users grows exponentially with the number of people you can connect to. This alliance gives Tata Communications' customers and Glowpoint's customers a greatly expanded range of connection options, with a deeper and broader reach, to enable and accelerate their business and improve the return on their investment in telepresence or video conferencing," said Peter Quinlan, senior director of managed telepresence services at Tata.

Under the terms of the agreement, Glowpoint will extend its service offerings to include Tata Communications' Managed Cisco TelePresence and Global Meeting Exchange business-to business-services. Tata Communications will work with Glowpoint to deliver enhanced interoperability between Cisco and other video devices, and to offer managed services across a wide range of video conferencing endpoints.

"Together we aim to give businesses a greater range of collaboration options, by enabling any-endpoint-to-any-endpoint connectivity, with a flawless user experience as a core metric. For our customers, it's the best of both worlds," said Joe Laezza, Glowpoint president and co-CEO.

The interconnection gives Tata Communications' customers access to all of Glowpoint's registered global endpoints, but also gives Glowpoint customers access to Tata's Global Meeting Exchange, which delivers global, telepresence-quality connections, and access to Tata's business to business telepresence services. Glowpoint customers can now also extend the reach of their corporate video networks by accessing Tata Communications' global network of Public Telepresence Rooms, now located in 15 cities. The company said additional locations would be opening in the coming months.