Macmillan Cancer Support saves £5,000 a month with Vidyo telepresence

Following its implementation of a Vidyo telepresence solution last June, UK charity Macmillan Cancer Support said it has saved about £5,000 a month on travel expenses.

It has also saved about 1,200 hours in staff travel time over the same period.

The videoconferencing solution was used to connect Macmillan's regional offices throughout England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The downloadable software solution uses the H.264 Scalable Video Coding video compression standard.

A spokesperson for Vidyo said this codec offers error resiliency by eliminating the Multipoint Control Unit, which is the central component of legacy videoconferencing, replacing it with a distributed architecture using an application layer router.

The software can easily be expanded and upgraded, according to the company.

The charity chose the solution over others from Polycom, Tandberg and V-Con as well as some smaller products. Vidyo telepresence was trialled for six weeks and took just two weeks to deploy.

Ian Humphreys, ICT infrastructure project manager at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "We found that Vidyo addressed our business needs, the quality was high and it was easy to use."

Although the company was vague on specifics for plans to further roll out the technology, Humphreys explained that the solution could be used to collaborate more closely with other charity organisations and the NHS.