Kuala Lumpur - 23 May 2011 - VADS Berhad and Cisco today signed a collaboration agreement to offer managed telepresence services to private and public sectors in Malaysia and the surrounding region.

The agreement with Cisco was signed by Ghazali Omar, Chief Executive Officer of VADS and Zulkapli Mustafa, Vice President of ICT Services at VADS. This collaboration was announced at Cisco's office in Kuala Lumpur today with Dato' Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa, Chairman of VADS who is also the Group Chief Executive Officer of Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM). Witnessing the exchange of documents were Cisco executives: Irving Tan, Cisco General Manager for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei; Anne Abraham, Managing Director of Cisco in Malaysia and Jeff White, Vice President for the Service Provider business in Asia Pacific.

Telepresence is the next generation in videoconferencing technology that allows virtual meetings to be conducted using life-size, high-definition video and spatial discrete audio. It enables real-time, face-to-face interactions that create an immersive collaboration experience, giving users the feeling of sitting in the same room with participants from the other location.

It transforms the way employees, partners and customers collaborate by bringing people and information together to increase productivity, accelerate decision-making, and reduce travel and a company's carbon footprint, which further contributes to cost savings.

The VADS Managed Telepresence Service will be offered on a three or five-year contract. The service includes bandwidth, managed end-to-end high-quality service with simplified provisioning, scheduling, a 24/7 helpdesk, technical support and various types of endpoints as a bundled package. It offers peace of mind and simplicity, making meetings via telepresence as easy as making a phone call.

The VADS Managed TelePresence Service will take advantage of Telekom Malaysia Berhad's nationwide and global high-speed IP network and customer base while deploying state-of-the-art Cisco TelePresence® technology.

At the same ceremony, VADS announced that it will be building a telepresence exchange infrastructure. The core infrastructure will reside in a VADS data center, running in a highly secure and resilient network and will be available for both local and global markets. The infrastructure also includes features for simplified provisioning, scheduling, metering, billing and service-level assurance reporting via a self-service portal for customers.

Telepresence Exchange by VADS will be the first in Malaysia and second in Southeast Asia – enabling companies to conduct immersive videoconferencing within their organisations or with other companies locally or globally. VADS TPX will interconnect with other global TPX to enable local customers to reach out beyond Malaysia to conduct immersive videoconferencing with their employees, partners, and suppliers.

"The construction of a TPX in Malaysia is in line with the VADS road map towards offering a collaborative hub consisting of several collaboration services for businesses," said Dato' Sri Zamzam Isa, VADS Berhad chairman.

The VADS Collaborative Hub will offer carrier-class collaboration services, namely, Managed Telepresence, Managed Unified Communications and Managed Digital Media services.

The partnership solidifies Cisco's position as the leading provider of telepresence and collaboration solutions worldwide. As of May 2011, there are 1,035 telepresence rooms deployed in 264 major cities across 67 countries globally.

"Video is changing the way people collaborate, and we are proud to work with VADS to drive business transformation in Malaysia – particularly with the high-speed broadband network available. The ability to offer managed telepresence as a service and the Cisco TelePresence Exchange System will raise the competitiveness of Malaysia as a regional hub and as a business center while providing opportunities for organisations to embrace new technologies towards becoming a connected nation," said Anne Abraham, managing director of Cisco in Malaysia.

The VADS and Cisco relationship dates back to 2001, when VADS started as a Cisco Premier Certified Partner. Today, VADS holds Gold Partner status due to its expertise in four core areas: routing, switching, security, local area network and unified communications.