Halo effect takes HP to a place beyond video conferencing

It involves video. And it enables conferencing. But HP's Halo rooms for virtual meetings take the concept so far beyond video conferencing that the company deliberately avoids the term, preferring to call the suite of technologies a "collaboration studio".

"This is taking the next big leap. It's a quantum step forward compared to video conferencing," says Michael Hoffman, senior vice-president of HP's Europe, Middle East and Africa image and printing group, at the launch of the first Irish Halo room at HP's Leixlip manufacturing and R&D facility.

In fact, "Halo-ing" (yes, it is on its way to becoming a verb for Halo users) is a little like getting to try out a technology heretofore limited to science fiction movies - appropriately enough, given that Halo began as an idea at Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks animation studio. DreamWorks, looking for a way to minimise travel between its California locations and partner Aardman Studios in Bristol, was central to developing the concept with HP.

The end result is pretty much what video conferencing has always promised to deliver, without ever making good.

Utilising a bank of three 50- inch plasma screens and a broadcast quality audio and video link-up running over a virtual private network operated by HP, Halo enables six people sitting at a gently curving wooden table to talk to six others - or alternatively, 18 others - six per plasma screen - linked from another identical Halo studio anywhere in the world.

There's no time delay at all as you speak or move, and the individuals on the screens face you directly across the table, at close to life-size, rather than miniaturised into a laptop window.

Because the studios and their furnishings are exactly the same, the sense of sharing a room rather than an audio and video connection is even stronger.Strong enough that the company has a growing list of what it calls "Halo moments," says Ken Crangle, general manager, Halo collaboration studios.

Speaking to Irish journalists from HP's Halo room in its Oregon, US facility, Crangle says Halo-ers sometimes stand up and reach out to shake hands, before remembering their meeting counterparts might be in Tokyo or Stuttgart. Or they turn to look toward their own studio door when someone enters the room on the other side of the conference.

"People forget they are in a virtual space, so they will do things that are inconsistent with a virtual world," he says.

Chief scientist Mark Gorzynski - also conferencing in from Oregon - says that what HP was trying to achieve was not to make the telephone or e-mail better but to ask "what was missing".

Engineers and social scientists concluded several technologies were missing.

"We couldn't use the internet or existing company networks because they weren't fast enough. We couldn't use existing software because it wasn't smart enough. And we couldn't use existing audio-visual technology because it wasn't clear enough."

Halo - the codename for the project which became its formal name - brings together cutting edge technologies Gorzynski and his team developed with DreamWorks, to run over a private HP-run network.

Crangle says the goal is to give the user a sense of being "a first-class visitor in space". The service even features a "concierge" button - which connects immediately and round the clock to HP employees in Oregon who can troubleshoot - or even adjust the lighting for the room - remotely.

How much does this all cost? The installation cost of a Halo room is €335,000 and a service contract for unlimited use is about €14,000 monthly - or as HP executives note, about the cost of two transatlantic business class tickets for executives who will on average be away for six days.

HP says about 60 Halo rooms have been installed since December for corporate customers including chipmaker AMD and PepsiCo.

Lionel Alexander, managing director of HP's Dublin inkjet manufacturing facility, says the fact that HP decided to install a Halo room in Ireland is indicative of the Irish centre's increasing importance as an R&D and business centre within HP.

It is used heavily - about 250 hours a month - for everything from executive tête-a-têtes to engineering meetings to product prototype demonstrations.

While HP said governments - ever slow-moving when it comes to technology - were not yet customers, the Taoiseach launched the facility by Halo-ing with HP's chief executive Mark Hurd in Palo Alto, California.

"When you bring Halo to diplomacy, maybe you'll see more countries getting along," says Gorzynski.