Tag Archives: video conferencing

Meetings.io Acquisition Signals Start of WebRTC Era?

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

WebRTCWebRTC (Real-Time Communication) has been getting a bit of press between meetings.io getting acquired by Jive (specifically chosen for its WebRTC technology) and TokBox announcing its new Opentok WebRTC for iOS SDK.

What’s the big deal with WebRTC?

WebRTC is exciting because it allows real-time audio/video to be embedded right in a web browser without any download, just like Flash – only its video performance is way better than Flash.  WebRTC is the combination of two great companies that Google acquired – Global IP Sound (for voice) and On2 (for video).

However, commentator Tsahi Levent-Levi thinks its a bit early for companies to be throwing all their eggs into the WebRTC basket.  Currently WebRTC is only fully supported by Google Chrome and Opera (although Firefox is on board with the WebRTC movement, and even Microsoft may be caving in some to the peer pressure).  It also still doesn’t have the performance of client-based video conferencing software like VSee :)  Nevertheless, with popular social platforms such as Jive and Facebook being dependent on the web, we can definitely expect to see WebRTC making bigger splashes in the collaboration market soon.

jive acquires meetings.io

Meetings.io and WebRTC

Meetings.io is a three person act based in San Francisco which put out an easy WebRTC-based video meetings and screen share solution.  Meetings.io started out using Flash, but then moved over to take advantage of WebRTC (which Google Hangouts uses, probably with similar performance).  Their hard work paid off because meetings.io along with Producteev was recently acquired by the web-based social business platform, Jive, for a grand total of 7.6 million plus 460,000 in Jive stock.

With these 2 new additions it’s clear that Jive making aggressive moves to stay in the enterprise collaboration game.  With its meetings.io acquisition, it can now add simple real time voice and video to enhance its collaboration capabilities and play with the big boys. Constellation Research principal analyst Alan Lepofsky notes that “IBM (Connections and Sametime), Microsoft (SharePoint and Lync), Citrix (Podio and GotoMeeting), Cisco (WebEx Meetings and Social) and Salesforce (Chatter) already offer social task management and real-time communications as part of their offerings.”  Techcrunch’s Alex Williams sees Jive as being in direct competition with Salesforce.com for this space.

OpenTok and WebRTC

TokBox (OpenTok) has also been moving away from its Flash origins and working to switch over to WebRTC for awhile now.  Recently it was acquired by Telefonica for its API (which is still Flash-based).  Its newly announced webRTC SDK for iOS is a big leap forward in allowing the integration of high quality live video into applications for iOS.

So what does this mean for VSee?  If you like the WebRTC performance, please do a side-by-side benchmark of VSee – you will be pleasantly surprised :)  On top of better network performance, VSee has fast screen share with annotation, and provides end-to-end 256-bit AES encryption.

Related articles

Follow us on Twitter (@VSee) and Like us on Facebook to hear about the latest from VSee!

Microsoft Lync: Video Conferencing Deployment Nightmare

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

microsoft lync video conferencingMicrosoft Lync (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator) offers a great set of communication tool integrations, making it popular with enterprises both large and small (<300).  Unfortunately for many businesses, going beyond Lync Instant Messaging (IM) is proving to be more headache than it’s worth.  According to Jeff Wellemeyer, West IP Communications’ executive vice president, most Lync deployments are only of IM, presence, and some audio conferencing.

Apparently, if you want to deploy audio or video conferencing applications, it becomes one big complicated mess.  In eWeek’s article, Wainhouse senior analyst Bill Haskins explains

“The step from Lync as an instant messaging engine to Lync as a conferencing engine and Lync as a PBX, those incremental steps add almost exponential layers of complexity to IT organizations.”

Not only is the internal network not necessarily equipped to handle videoconferencing and other high-demand services, a unique set of equipment is needed to make the connection to those external networks, he said.

“You need specific equipment, specific gateways and you need to be very careful about where you place those elements between your network and the outside network, because anytime someone makes a call now they will be going through that specific network path that you built.”

Source: eWeek

According to a Wainhouse Research survey, over 80 percent of enterprises are using Instant Messaging (IM) for business communications.  However only 10 or 15 percent of these same enterprises have deployed the full suite of communication tools (such as audio and video conferencing) available to them through their unified communication (UC) solutions.  Sadly, this defeats the whole purpose of choosing an all-in-one solution.

Gartner’s 2012 Unified Communications report advises, “Enterprises considering deploying Lync telephony and video should understand its limitations and infrastructure requirements, how they will support branch offices, and how they will obtain global third-party support if they need it.”

These days there are plenty of cloud-based newcomers who are willing to take the complexity of enterprise-level video conferencing out of your hands TenHands, VidTel, Blue Jeans, Zoom, etc, and of course, my personal favorite:  VSee :)

Referenced articles

Follow us on Twitter (@VSee) and Like us on Facebook to hear about the latest from VSee!

OmniJoin? Nefsis? Brother, what’s going on?

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Brother OmniJoin Nefsis

Last December, when Brother purchased Nefsis, I thought it was a great outcome for Nefsis and a great move for Brother.  Nefsis had a very complex pricing structure and needed a huge distribution partner to push its complicated solution into enterprises.  Brother had a huge distribution base, with its long history in home and office products – especially its printers, typewriters, and sewing machines.  It made a lot of sense for Brother to push an enterprise collaboration product to its core customers.

June of this year, Brother launched OmniJoin web conferencing (a rebranding of Nefsis). What isn’t clear is how Brother plans to make OmniJoin a viable competitor in the web conferencing/unified communications space.  It doesn’t seem to be too much different from WebEx and GoTo Meeting, except in its pricing scheme, and it sports a pretty hefty price tag.

Despite a mostly glowing review of OmniJoin, No Jitter blog still expressed reservations about OmniJoin’s overburdened interface.  OmniJoin also currently lacks a Mac client and the ability to record.

Related articles:

Follow us on Twitter (@VSee) and Like us on Facebook to hear about the latest from VSee!

FuzeBox Raises $20M for online collaboration

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

We heard that FuzeBox, an online collaboration and meeting tool, recently raised $20 million in Series A funding, led by Index Ventures.

“Fuze HD is a mobile and web-based collaboration service that features integrated audio conferencing as well as high-definition, synchronized video and image sharing.” – Crunchbase

FuzeBox uses Vidyo for their back engine, and this round is definitely a big win for both :)

Congratulations to FuzeBox and Vidyo!

To learn more about how VSee compares with Vidyo for your online collaboration needs, read this article on VSee: Free Alternative to Vidyo Telepresence Business Video Conference – Comparison

Juniper Networks Invests In Vidyo

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Yesterday, it was announced that Vidyo has received another round of funding, this time from Juniper Networks, bringing their total funding to $97M. From the article:

“Vidyo makes video conferencing software that allows organizations to very efficiently and effectively make and receive video calls across any number of connected devices. Its video compression technology is based on H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which can be used to deploy high-quality video conferencing, even on constrained mobile networks.”

Here at VSee, we provide high quality video without complicated infrastructure or video servers, and at less than half the bandwidth that Vidyo requires.

Read our article here: VSee – Free Alternative to Vidyo Telepresence Business Video Conference – Comparison

Follow us on Twitter (@VSee) and Like us on Facebook to hear about the latest from VSee! By the way, we are hiring too.