News & Views on Unified Communications & Collaboration PAGE 1 On October 3 Thinking Phone Networks announced a $16.5 million investment led by Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV) and Bessemer Venture Partners. The investment will be used to expand its sales, marketing, and support services internationally, enhance its ThinkingSuite communications delivery ecosystem, and continue to grow its global partnership network. In addition, the company announced that Bob Hower, general partner, ATV, and Bob Goodman, partner, Bes- semer Venture Partners, have joined its Board of Direc- tors. Both ATV and Bessemer have been early investors in other leading UC, infrastructure, and VoIP-related compa- nies, such as Acme Packets, Twilio, and Skype. Thinking Phone Networks provides a UC as a Service (UCaaS) offer targeted at midsize and larger enterprises. Features include a hosted, telephony-enabled UC experience including presence, messaging, voice and video conferencing, and contact center features. The offer includes a focus on mobility and communications analytics, and can be integrated into various off-the-shelf and custom business applications. The company reports that its revenues have doubled in each of the last three years, a pace that is definitely above the industry growth rate. This announcement also coincides with technology licensing agreements that will enable service providers, technology vendors, and channel partners to deliver their own UCaaS offerings. What Bill thinks: Thinking Phone Networks continues to prove its growing strength in the UCaaS space. In fact, Wainhouse Research’s 2011 Global UCaaS Market Forecast puts the company in double digit market share across all telephony-enabled UCaaS providers. This funding announcement, an international expansion, ongoing channel growth, and continued investment in features will only reinforce its ability to compete as the ‘Big Logos’ of Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, and Avaya continue to escalate the UCaaS wars. Thinking Phone Net- works is one of the unique providers in the current UCaaS market, as most of its stand-alone competitors — think 8x8 or ShoreTel / M5 — are selling directly into the small-to-medium enterprise space. The company has been very successful, on the other hand, selling pure play UCaaS into mid-sized and large enterprises. Also, it is one of the few providers of UCaaS that has grown a hosted UC solution from the ground up. Compare this to traditional VoIP providers or telcos that are adding UC features to an existing experience. This creates a number of competi- tive advantages: a self-managed cost model, end- to-end UCaaS expertise, and a long track record of a positive uni- fied customer experience. Volume 13 Issue #21 12-October-12 Thinking Phone Networks Gets the Big Bucks Bill Haskins, [email protected]Wainhouse Research’s 2011 Global UCaaS Market Forecast puts the company in double digit market share across all telephony- enabled UCaaS providers.
On October 3 Thinking Phone Networks announced a $16.5 million investment led by Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV) and Bessemer Venture Partners. The investment will be used to expand its sales, marketing, and support services internationally, enhance its ThinkingSuite communications delivery ecosystem, and continue to grow its global partnership network.
In addition, the company announced that Bob Hower, general partner, ATV, and Bob Goodman, partner, Bes-semer Venture Partners, have joined its Board of Direc-tors. Both ATV and Bessemer have been early investors in other leading UC, infrastructure, and VoIP-related compa-nies, such as Acme Packets, Twilio, and Skype.
Thinking Phone Networks provides a UC as a Service (UCaaS) offer targeted at midsize and larger enterprises. Features include a hosted, telephony-enabled UC experience including presence, messaging, voice and video conferencing, and contact center features. The offer includes a focus on mobility and communications analytics, and can be integrated into various off-the-shelf and custom business applications.
The company reports that its revenues have doubled in each of the last three years, a pace that is definitely
above the industry growth rate. This
announcement also coincides with technology licensing
agreements that will enable service providers, technology vendors, and channel partners to deliver their own UCaaS offerings.
What Bill thinks: Thinking Phone Networks continues to prove its growing strength in the UCaaS space. In fact, Wainhouse Research’s 2011 Global UCaaS Market Forecast puts the company in double digit market share across all telephony-enabled UCaaS providers. This funding announcement, an international expansion, ongoing channel growth, and continued investment in features will only reinforce its ability to compete as the ‘Big Logos’ of Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, and Avaya continue to escalate the UCaaS wars.
Thinking Phone Net-works is one of the unique providers in the current UCaaS market, as most of its stand-alone competitors — think 8x8 or ShoreTel / M5 — are selling directly into the small-to-medium enterprise space. The company has been very successful, on the other hand, selling pure play UCaaS into mid-sized and large enterprises. Also, it is one of the few providers of UCaaS that has grown a hosted UC solution from the ground up. Compare this to traditional VoIP providers or telcos that are adding UC features to an existing experience. This creates a number of competi-tive advantages: a self-managed cost model, end- to-end UCaaS expertise, and a long track record of a positive uni-fied customer experience.
Volume 13 Issue #21 12-October-12
Thinking Phone Networks Gets the Big BucksBill Haskins, [email protected]
Wainhouse Research’s 2011 Global UCaaS Market Forecast puts the company in double digit market share across all telephony-enabled UCaaS providers.
ShareTheVisit and a Changing Healthcare LandscapeAlan D. Greenberg, [email protected]
A new service was introduced at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week, ShareTheVisit. This is a simple combination of video-enabled web conferencing as a part of an online care circle to simplify communications around complex medical matters. The goal is to allow those who want to be at the patient’s side during medical exams and visits (read parents of children, or children of seniors) to participate remotely when they can’t be there in person. The service includes a healthcare-specific, HIPAA-compliant solution that consists of care circle creation, scheduling aides, appointment notifications, online consent management, and WebEx, with an emphasis on the latter’s video conferencing capabilities. (For those outside of the U.S., HIPAA is a U.S. federal mandate regarding standardization of health insurance information and the handling of personal, healthcare-related data.) Care circle invitation and management can be self-managed by the patient or a designated care circle member.
Back to the announcement — WR is excited to see continued investment in innovative communications companies like Thinking Phone Networks. The challenge these smaller companies generally face centers on a lack of brand recognition and a smaller sales force — it can be difficult to compete with Godzilla-sized marketing engines! That said, we expect to see continued innovation from this crew and are glad to see ongoing interest from the venture capitalists as well.
GlobalConference.com Expands International Dial–In NumbersMarc Beattie, [email protected]
GlobalConference has added four new countries — India, China, Singapore, and Vietnam — to its list of international dial-in locations (which now tops 54 countries). Pricing for international dial-in numbers is $25 per month with per-minute charges accrued at the customer’s regular rate plan on GlobalConference. This reservationless service allows meeting hosts to pay the same low per–minute rate as for their domestic participants (except for India and China, where the pricing is slightly higher), and users can choose from 250 to 1000 minute monthly plans or an unlimited option. There are no penalties for overage — customers just pay their plan’s per–minute rate.
What Marc thinks: GCP (Global Conferencing Partners) and FCCA (Free Conferencing Corporation of America) both started out as free conferencing services in North America. FCCA has stayed true to its roots with free services – all the while expanding globally, as we’ve noted in frequent updates in the Bulletin recently — while GCP pushes for low cost paid services — and is also expanding globally. These are two different approaches with similar goals: focus on individuals and small businesses with high value services, expand globally, and monetize the service in a creative way.
The service includes a healthcare-specific, HIPAA-compliant solution that consists of care circle creation, scheduling aides, appointment notifica-tions, online consent management, and WebEx, with an em-phasis on the latter’s video conferencing capabilities.
The service appears to be designed to leverage BYOD / mobility, in that patients or someone accompanying them are meant to carry their iPad or iPhone to a physician visit and connect “with the click of one button” with others on either mobile devices or Internet-connected computers. When physicians offer the service to their patients they pay a monthly subscription fee. Patients and their families (for now) can find and use ShareTheVisit independently for free just by signing up, though the company indicates it intends to introduce monthly and annual subscription plans for patients.
What Alan thinks: This — meaning the concept of using video and web conferencing to improve healthcare — is one of those instances in which the “little engine that could” keeps trying to get to the top of the mountain, but because the mountain is so high, many of us on the train aren’t aware just how high we’ve climbed. We’ve heard from some remarkably huge telehealth deployments this year at our WR Summits and in our research, such as Canada’s Ontario Telemedicine Network, the Mayo Clinic, and others, and see a lot of providers beginning to integrate video conferencing into a suite of offerings that wrap around it. Many of the offerings now treat video and integrated diagnostic devices as a piece of the patient care puzzle that also includes patient data, medical records, and treatment plans. But the ShareTheVisit concept says that what’s important is not just what we thought of as “traditional telemedicine,” a video link between patient and physician / specialist, but also the link to a larger community of caregivers. It’s not clear yet if
a ShareTheVisit service is going to be anything more than an anomaly, an odd little application much like when we saw the “watch the daycare center” or “watch the home” (surveillance) market briefly get exciting. It is clear that a lot of children of aging baby boomers interested in being involved in their parents’ care decisions could result in a market. But it will take serious money invested in sales and marketing as well as integrated solutions like ShareTheVisit to make it work.
News in BriefWeb Conferencing
• ReadyTalk announced the availability of the ReadyTalk for Marketo connector, which increases both the ease of acquiring and the accuracy of webinar-generated data and moves leads through the marketing and sales pipeline faster. The connector was designed for Marketo customers who want to use ReadyTalk for delivering webinars while leveraging Marketo for event invitations, registration, confirmations, reminders, and timely follow-up while eliminating manual processes. This supplements recent announcements from ReadyTalk related to Salesforce.com and Acteva integrations. ReadyTalk for Marketo is free and available as a step within the Marketo Design Builder.
• Just after we recently published a research note on Watchitoo, the company quietly launched Watchitoo Playground, a low-cost, consumer-oriented, oddly-priced service for up to 25 meeting participants. A free trial version is available that supports up to 11 users onscreen at any one time. And a more feature-rich subscription version with support for more video
ReadyTalk - Marketo Integration
Upcoming WR Speaking Appearances & Events
18 October, Tampa, FL30 October, Anaheim, CA
Alan D. Greenberg, Bill Haskins, AVI-SPL, Collaboration Expo 2012
24 October, Monterey, CA
Bill Haskins, VCI-Group 3rd Annual Conference
1 November, San Antonio
Alan D. Greenberg, WCET
28-29 November 2012, Singapore
WR UC&C Summit, Conrad Centennial Hotel
28-29 January, Amsterdam
WR UC&C Summit, NH Barbizon
16-17 July 2013, Santa Clara, California
WR UC&C Summit, Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
Other Analyst Travel to Industry Events
16-17 October, Los Angeles, CA
Ira Weinstein and Andy Nilssen, Cisco Collaboration Analyst and Consultant Summit
participants and screen sharing will be available for the low, low price of $3.80 per user per month. One minute Watchitoo is consumer-focused, then enterprise-focused, then back to consumers. It seems to be targeting Google+ Hangouts. And channel partners to take it to market. As we said in the note, we like a few things about its enterprise service, but…there are a lot of ifs and buts about what this company really wants to be when it grows up.
Video Conferencing• Glowpoint has completed its acquisition of Affinity
VideoNet, a provider of public videoconferencing rooms and managed services. Plans for this acquisition were announced not too long ago. Separately, Glowpoint also announced OpenVideo 2.0, its next generation of Video-as-a-Service offering. OpenVideo 2.0 includes new and redesigned services delivered from the OpenVideo cloud, including support for a wider range of video systems. OpenVideo Room — a next-gen of the company’s cloud service — now connects users to a primo list of devices / endpoints from the likes of Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize, StarLeaf, Avaya, GoogleTalk, and Microsoft
Lync (note no Skype as best we can tell from their PR). Glowpoint also enhanced its OpenVideo All-Inclusive service, which lets customers pay one monthly fee and choose a desktop or room system from Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize or StarLeaf bundled with a complete end-to-end service delivered from the OpenVideo cloud.
• Avaya has announced that members of its Avaya Connect Channel Partner Program can be authorized to sell Radvision Scopia video solutions as part of its UC offerings. More than 50 Avaya Connect Chan-nel Partners in fact already have been selected for fast-track authorization to sell Radvision Scopia, expanding Radvision’s global reach. The authoriza-tion program will be available to all Avaya Connect partners beginning in January 2013. Avaya Connect channel partners who are authorized to sell Scopia solutions receive top-tier levels of technical support, services integration, and training for incorporating enhanced video into a communications solution. Ex-isting Radvision partners will continue to participate in the Radvision Eye-to-Eye partner program
• Vaddio has added DataVisual as its sole distributor in Canada for the complete Vaddio product line and also has announced a two-year comprehensive warranty plan along with a free one-year advance replacement program for its dealers. The new program applies to all Vaddio products purchased as of January 1, 2012.
Introducing one of the WR Bulletin Sponsors
Dialogic Inc. develops products and technologies that enable operators to provide — and subscribers to enjoy — an enhanced mobile experience. Whether our products are used in mobile value-added service solutions or to transform, connect and optimize communications services on a wide variety of networks, Dialogic understands that “mobile experience matters.” In conference and collaboration solutions and services, Dialogic PowerMedia Software and Media Servers play an important role providing advanced multimedia mixing and processing to meet the demand for HD Audio and Video experiences across all types of networks and endpoints. Our technology touches two billion mobile subscribers a day, and our network solutions carry 15 billion minutes of traffic per month.
For more information, please click here.
The WR Bulletin would like you to join us in thanking our sponsors:
Get your company’s name & link here! Contact Sales.
The fine print: Sponsorship of the WR Bulletin in no way implies that our sponsors endorse the opinions expressed in the WRB. Nor does it
imply that the Bulletin endorses their products or services. We remain an equal opportunity critic.
As we said in the note, we like a few things about its enterprise service, but…there are a lot of ifs and buts about what this company really wants to be when it grows up.
• Compass Business Solutions ha puesto su clases online en Espanol. Basically Compass has expanded its online training options, and on-demand courses are now available in Spanish as well as English. Compass currently offers on-demand training in English and Spanish for Cisco’s C-Series product line, and training in English for Cisco’s TMS software and MCU’s. It plans to add on-demand training in Spanish for its Telepresence classes going forward.
• In recent years we’ve seen a handful of robotic video systems introduced, including VGo, which has demoed its product at WR Summits in the past, and the Double Robotics iPad-carrying Double. Now there is Beam, a $16,000 mobile videoconferencing “robot” (Remote Presence Device as the company puts it) available from Suitable Technologies. The Beam unit uses dual brushless electric motors driven by an integrated car battery; the device docks for recharging. The device uses two Logitech HD webcams with almost 180-degree views and zoom capability. Four Wi-Fi antennas (two 2.4 GHz and two 5GHz) provide connectivity, and seven microphones are built in, as well as a 17-inch monitor and onboard speaker. Teleworkers might enjoy a clever company video that shows the device in use between a home office worker and her colleagues.
Voxair, has been enhanced, and now supports up to 150 people to connect to the same audio conference.
Miscellaneous• Microsoft 365, Eduroam, Code 42 Software, ICE
Health Systems, Instructure, LectureTools, Splunk, and Vidyo have joined the Internet2 NET+ Services program.
WR CSP Summit Boston WrapWR’s 8th annual CSP Summit took place on Tuesday in Boston. Several themes became apparent through the presentations, panels, and audience interactions:
• Mobility: Support for mobile devices has become a critical component of UC&C. Besides demand driven from BYOD and enabling the ability to stay connected, mobile support is forcing the re-design of the UI with a focus on simplicity.
• Video (yep, video): Finally becoming of age as imple-mented in IM / UC and web conferencing solutions —
Beam RPD
Marc Beattie, WR Managing Partner, delivers the keynote
Plenty of time to meet new contacts and exchange thoughts
Those who attended told us they found the event extremely helpful for understanding market dynamics and creating forward motion strategies.
New White Paper: The Viability of Large-Scale Personal Video Conferencing Deployments
After less than two months of planning, Avaya deployed desktop video conferencing to 4,000 employees. This white paper, sponsored by Avaya, turns an eye to its own internal deployment, highlighting the importance of critical mass, the ability to conference with many types of endpoints, and the value of both scheduled and ad hoc video calling.
1:1 with Huawei Europe – Mourad Bedrani and Steve Tang Andrew W. Davis, [email protected]
Andrew recently spoke with Mourad Bedrani, Sr. Product Manager, and Steve Tang, Head of UC&C Solutions for Huawei’s Enterprise Business Unit in Western Europe. Since Mourad doesn’t speak Chinese and Steve doesn’t speak French, the group traded barbs in English. This was before Huawei and ZTE received a great deal of mainstream media publicity earlier this week regarding alleged Chinese state influence on the companies.
WR: We know Huawei as a huge telecom equipment pro-vider for carriers worldwide as well as a mobile handset manufacturer and a video conferencing leader in China. Can you tell us a little bit about the Enterprise Business Unit and a bit about your organization in Europe.
ST: Huawei Enterprise Business Group is one of Huawei’s three business groups. Leveraged by its strong R&D capa-bilities and comprehensive technical expertise, Huawei Enterprise provides wide ranging and highly efficient information communications technology (ICT) solutions and services. Together with partners, Huawei Enterprise offers solutions for vertical industries and enterprise customers globally including government and public sectors, transportation, power grids, energy, and finance, as well as other fields. These solutions cover network infrastructure, UC&C, video conferencing & telepresence, cloud computing & data center, and industry application solutions.
WR: Let’s start at the roots. Is Huawei videoconferencing successful in China? And why?
ST: Huawei is number one in HD videoconferencing and telepresence in China. In fact, we believe Huawei holds over 30% market share there. Huawei has sold a total of
both mobile clients and desktops. Results in shorter, more productive meetings — and is changing how people work.
• Over-the-top (OTT) networks: The legacy telephone system has become a major bottleneck from both an ease-of-use (e.g., dialing codes) and features (e.g., narrow band audio) perspective. Expect users to migrate to OTT connections, especially if the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) wideband initiative is delayed by the wireless carriers.
• Sync & Async collaboration: Beginning to mesh as found in “persistent” web conferencing and other solutions; the key is to enable an easy transition back and forth.
• Pricing models: Moving from utility / “per minute” to fixed / “all you can eat,” in some cases with an overage charge. Driven by need to budget and encourage use.
• WebRTC: the “holy grail” that solves all endpoint client problems and download issues? It’s a lively debate. Stay tuned.
1500 Telepresence rooms worldwide. We have a strong presence in Africa and the Middle East, and a complete portfolio for visual communications. Now we are eager to expand the success we have in Asia towards Europe and America. Europe is our focus today, but the U.S. and North America will be next.
WR: I see that Huawei has developed a second generation of video conferencing and telepresence products. What markets are you focusing on?
MB: We launched our second generation 1080p60 telepresence system in early 2011. Recently we introduced our 3rd generation, bringing TP FullView, a panoramic display with 48:9 resolution. All of our products adhere to industry standards (H.323, SIP, TIP) and are being built to be IMS-compliant, something of great interest not only to the carriers but also to enterprises looking for mobility. In addition, we have ongoing efforts in unified communications and we expect to roll out all of these solutions across the globe.
WR: Mourad has been around the video conferencing industry in France for many years. Is France your focus for Europe?
ST: Yes, Mourad is one of our key assets to help Huawei build a market strategy. He is responsible for our go-to-market tactics in Europe, with his main focus being France in 2011-2012. As you know, one important result for our French team is that Huawei has signed a reseller partner-ship with Orange Business Solutions and with EGT on a worldwide basis. These partnerships support international deployment projects as well as our business in France.
WR: Lots of times people forget that EMEA includes Africa. Does Huawei have an Africa strategy and is Africa part of your job.
MB: Huawei has been in the Middle East and Africa market for over ten years, selling equipment to the car-riers, mobile providers mostly, but also selling VC and TP rooms. We have strategic partners not only in the telecom Industries delivering end-to-end solutions but also in ICT. But the Western Europe team covers mainly European countries such as UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Ben-elux and Switzerland.WR: What do you think are the distinctive features and
benefits of Huawei’s video conferencing solutions?
MB: Huawei delivers end-to-end solutions. Our perspective on this is different from that of other VC vendors since we come from the world where carriers are the client. The Huawei portfolio includes fully interoperable video conferencing and video telephony solutions as well as video and network
infrastructure. We have several innovative features such as 3G / 4G / LTE embedded access direct with every codec, as well as the standard features that customers expect. While Huawei is not always known for its innovation, we have what I believe is the world’s only touch screen executive desktop – our model VP9050, with a 22-inch screen and priced at only 4350 Euros.
WR: What is your strategy with respect to channels? Are you selling direct, or through carriers?
ST: Huawei Enterprises has an indirect strategy. We sell through channel partners. We are now working with telecom operators as well as with systems integrators and pan-European distributors. We are setting up a two-tier model familiar to many in the industry.
WR: Are you going to compete directly against Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize, and Radvision. Or is there another strategy at play here?
ST: Huawei has been in the video conferencing market since 1993, long before the players you mentioned. We are leading in the China market and strive to deliver what customers are requesting in terms of products and solutions for videoconferencing, telepresence, and UC. We are financially strong with both carriers and enterprises and are confident with the competitiveness of our robust E2E products, which are innovative while also being standards-based. We have been competing with those vendors for many years in China and we welcome competition. We are confident with our global sales and services competency. In addition, our focus is on customer needs and partner needs, not competition. To make customers and partners happy is our main concern.
We launched our second generation 1080p60 telepresence system in early 2011, and recently introduced our 3rd generation, bringing TP FullView, a panoramic display with 48:9 resolution.
1Editorial note: Radvision was founded in 1992, PictureTel – later acquired by Polycom – was founded in the late 1980’s, and TANDBERG was producing video conferencing products as early as 1989.
PAGE 9Volume 13 Issue #21 / 12-October-12
New Studies from Wainhouse ResearchFor information on WR studies and subscriptions, contact [email protected]
4Streaming & Webcasting
Vendor Profile – ON24Profile of industry vendor ON24 highlights the company’s operations in webcast services, self-service webcasting and virtual environments. Discussion of company’s operations details current revenue breakdowns, key customers and important vertical markets for ON24 services. The central role of the com-pany’s Platform 10 architecture also is highlighted.
Research Note – Re-Engineering the Streaming WorkflowExtending Platform Capabilities Via Hosted SolutionsThe rise of hosted software is changing how vendors of enterprise streaming platforms assemble integrated solutions for capturing, managing and distrib-uting streaming media content. This research note discusses how targeted cloud solutions can influence video workflow and the business models that are emerging to support this emerging approach to platform development.
Market Forecast – 2012 Enterprise Streaming Solutions Market Sizing & 5-Year ForecastThis report focuses on the global market for enterprise streaming solutions, providing a five-year forecast for product and services revenues generated in the sale of end-to-end platforms enabling the capture, management, publishing and tracking of enterprise streaming media content. Specific areas of focus include a definition of the market segment, highlights of key components of enterprise streaming media solutions, market sizing for 2011, revenue breakdowns by vertical sector and geography, forecasts for enterprise streaming solutions through 2016 and a review of key assumptions influencing the market forecast.
4Group Videoconferencing
SpotCheck – Videoconferencing Endpoints & Infrastructure Q2-2012Worldwide and regional unit sales, revenues, and market shares for videoconferencing endpoints and infrastructure technologies, with breakdowns by type of product (multi-codec, single-codec, executive or video MCU and other video infrastructure)
Market Forecast – 2012 Videoconferencing Endpoints & Infrastructure Market Sizing & 5-Year ForecastThis report focuses on the global videoconferencing endpoint and video infrastructure market including the following product categories; multi-codec (immersive) systems, single-codec (group VC) systems, executive systems, video bridges / MCUs, and other infrastructure devices. Specific areas of focus in-clude the market segment definition, 2011 market size with revenue and unit breakdowns, recent revenue and unit sales history for each product category, 5-year forecasts for each product category including regional breakdowns, and discussions re: the impact of mobile video on the group video market.
Market Forecast – 2012 Videoconferencing Managed Services Market Sizing & 5-Year ForecastThis report focuses on the global videoconferencing managed services market. Specific areas of coverage include defining the market segment, market size in 2011, market growth data for 2009 - 2011 including revenue and total # of customers, average revenue per customer, average selling prices (ASPs), market penetration, location of devices under management, revenue breakdowns by service category and vertical market, and WR’s 5-year forecast for ASPs, unit sales (meaning systems under management), and total market revenue.
WR: Speaking of UC. Are you going head-to-head against Microsoft, not to mention Cisco, Siemens, Avaya and others?
MB & ST: Our UC architecture eSpace is deployed internal-ly, supporting 130,000 employees across all of Huawei and is being used on a daily basis. We also recognize that many Huawei partners and customers have UC solutions from others, especially Microsoft. We have demonstrated that our VC codecs are interoperable with Microsoft Lync. This al-lows Lync clients to connect in point-to-point or multipoint modes to Huawei infrastructure and also to video confer-encing endpoints. We are also working to make our eSpace solution interoperate with Microsoft Lync.
WR: The Huawei brand is unknown in the enterprise market. Are you planning to launch some sort of brand awareness campaign?
ST: Huawei has launched a new business unit dedicated to the enterprise market. We aim to promote our E2E solution to meet enterprise expectations and to do so we are building a channel strategy to reach the last mile. In the meantime, we are launching an ad campaign about Huawei values and solutions on a worldwide basis. Among them: 40 industry events were held in 2011, 50 channel events will be held by the end of 2012, plus an enterprise demo truck road show in more than 40 cities in Europe and an advertising campaign in 11 countries. Perhaps you’ve seen some examples in The Economist or in those in-flight airline magazines
WR: So I guess there isn’t much that keeps you up at night.
Feel free to forward this newsletter to colleagues. Free subscriptions: www.wainhouse.com/bulletin
4Unified Communications
Provider Reviews – 2012 Asia Pacific European UCaaS Vendor ReviewsA critical review and assessment of top UC providers operating in Asia Pacific. Includes a summary of UC features, company background, UC product description, and analysis of each provider’s approach.
Market Forecast – 2012 Worldwide UCaaS Market ForecastProvides a description of the current state of the Worldwide market, assesses current trends, identifies risks and opportunities, and provides assistance on market approach, services and prices. Current market data and analysis and forecast information are included in this study.
Market Forecast – 2012 Asia Pacific UCaaS Market ForecastProvides a description of the current state of the Asia Pacific market, assesses current trends, identifies risks and opportunities, and provides assistance on market approach, services and prices. Current market data and analysis and forecast information are included in this study.
4Personal and Web-Based Conferencing
Vendor Profile – AvayaDetailed information, insight, and analysis on Avaya and its on-premise audio conferencing and personal & web-based related offerings (includes AAC7).
Metrics Survey – WebMetrics First Half 2012Usage & User Preferences for Web Conferencing and Related Offerings This survey focuses on brand recognition / perceptions and product functionality / feature set preferences including meeting characteristics, HQ/HD video conferencing, telework, and use of instant messaging.
Market Forecast – 2012 Web Conferencing Suppliers Worldwide Market Sizing & 5-Year Forecast This study focuses on the worldwide market for suppliers of web conferencing on-premise products and hosted services / SaaS. The specific web confer-encing offerings covered include on-premise client / server software, hosted services, and web conferencing sold as part of a collaboration suite. Since data for this study was collected (or estimated) on the supplier level, the resulting numbers do not include channel mark-ups (see WR’s CSP services stud-ies for sizing that includes CSP provider margins.)
4Distance Education & e-Learning
Vendor Profile – Watchitoo Founded in early 2007, Watchitoo provides a hosted, real-time collaboration platform that brings together multimedia presentations and video confer-encing to create a type of “virtual online stage” for presenting collaborative content to small classes and large audiences. While it focuses on three major application areas / markets, is Watchitoo ready for prime time?
Research Note – The LMS Integration Wars Heat Up: Implications for the Collaboration IndustryThe Learning Management System (LMS) has been a “moving target” for the collaboration industry in recent years. This note explains the role of the LMS in education and training environments, explains the degree of customer interest, offers an assessment of emerging standards like bLTI and the Tin Can API, and describes how the real-time collaboration industry should monitor LMS integration issues.
Market Forecast – Web Conferencing for Education and Training Worldwide Supplier Market Sizing & 5-Year Forecast 2012-2017Web conferencing is an essential technology for corporate training, professional development, distance education, virtual schools, and other applications that support teaching and learning. This market sizing and five-year forecast estimate – based on vendor data and end user surveys – calculates the total amount of revenue associated with education and training going to three markets: corporate training, higher education, and primary / secondary education.
4Audio Conferencing
SpotCheck – 2012 Q2 CSP SpotCheckDetails quarterly trends of volume and revenue in 11 countries and 3 regions for audio and web conferencing services.
Market Forecast – 2012 Audio Conferencing Bridge Suppliers Worldwide Market Sizing & 5-Year Forecast This study focuses on the worldwide market for audio conferencing bridges, which are purchased for use by enterprise-based end users and by Confer-encing Services Providers (CSPs) to enable audio conferencing services. Market sizing and forecast segmentation includes supplier type (traditional stand-alone vs. UC platform add-on vis-a-vis Microsoft Lync), sales to enterprises vs. CSPs, and port type (PSTN vs. IP); port ASPs are also included.
Provider Reviews – 2012 Global Conferencing Provider ReviewsThis study provides a review and analysis of 13 global CSPs (conferencing / collaboration service providers) operating in two or more regions worldwide. This review is intended to offer insight into how each provider approaches the market, what distinguishes them, and the partnerships and relationships in which they are engaged. Separate studies of local providers who operate primarily in North American, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific have been released separately.
