"We think telepresence is going to revolutionize the way meetings are done," Herring said during a live demonstration of the service held on Tuesday. "This is a great way to collaborate."

One pilot customer is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which bought and installed a Cisco TelePresence system at its Orlando VA Medical Center in Florida and plans to install another at its headquarters location in Washington D.C.

Dave Chiplick, director of the Office of Telecommunications at VA, said the first-generation enterprise video conferencing network. VA is a pioneer in the use of videoconferencing systems for delivering healthcare services in rural areas, using systems from other vendors such as Polycom and Tandberg. 

"We believe our use of telepresence systems will expand," Chiplick said, adding that Cisco's high-end systems are "part of a portfolio of capabilities" and that VA is "vendor agnostic."

Internally, Cisco has deployed more than 400 telepresence systems and has held 260,000 meetings using them. Cisco officials say they have saved 105,000 metric tons of carbon emissions by reducing air travel.