News & Views on Unified Communications & Collaboration PAGE 1 December; one of them, FedBid, was for $25 million. No specific sum was announced for this round of financing, but Revolution Growth Fund is now Echo360’s largest shareholder. • Just in yesterday: Avaya has completed its acquisition of Radvision, for the price of $11.85 per share, for a total transaction of approximately $230 million. Radvision will operate as an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya under the Radvision brand. The companies will be demonstrating their suite of video collaboration solutions next week at InfoComm 2012. Goodbye forever ticker symbol RVSN. • Dialogic has announced that three of its partners: APEX Voice Communications, LiveSein, and Telepo have built wireless solutions for their service provider and enterprise customers using Dialogic PowerMedia software. APEX Voice Communications’ Video Conferencing System is a wideband / HD voice and HD videoconferencing platform that integrates with existing 3G / 4G and IP / IMS converged networks, supporting multimedia like PowerPoint, live TV and social media streams joined into a conference, adding a personalized dimension to the call. LiveSein’s solution combines telephony technology with the capabilities of the Web to form an Internet application that it says fosters collaboration among distant partners via online meetings while managing working documents and mobile video conferences. Telepo’s technology enables service providers to offer enterprises advanced business communications as a service under their own brands. Fostering functionality across communication tools • Most of us will never know just how keen we might have gotten about the Cisco Cius personal device, based on the Android OS, as the company announced it is ceasing development work in recognition that bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and Apple / Android tablets (made by others) rule. The company claims that its own research indicates that 95% of companies have their own BYOD policies. While we are skeptical that this number is a true reflection of how many companies really have policies related to BYOD, the move makes sense and frees the company to focus on porting its Jabber voice, video, IM and presence clients to accommodate BYOD. Jabber clients already are available for Apple iOS, RIM BlackBerry devices, and Windows PC’s, and are expected to be delivered to the many other Android-based tablets hitting the market. Volume 13 Issue #13 6-June-12 News in Brief Cisco Cius • Saying it’s a “win-win-win” for education and its stakeholders, Steve Case and Ted Leonsis of AOL fame and their Revolution Growth Fund are investing in lecture capture vendor Echo360. Echo360 provides live and on demand streaming, archival, search, and other blended learning capabilities. Both Echo360 and Case have signaled they seek to expand the core “capture” market and over time foster through its customers additional innovations around blended learning. This is Revolution Growth’s third investment since
December; one of them, FedBid, was for $25 million. No specific sum was announced for this round of financing, but Revolution Growth Fund is now Echo360’s largest shareholder.
• Just in yesterday: Avaya has completed its acquisition of Radvision, for the price of $11.85 per share, for a total transaction of approximately $230 million. Radvision will operate as an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya under the Radvision brand. The companies will be demonstrating their suite of video collaboration solutions next week at InfoComm 2012. Goodbye forever ticker symbol RVSN.
• Dialogic has announced that three of its partners: APEX Voice Communications, LiveSein, and Telepo have built wireless solutions for their service provider and enterprise customers using Dialogic PowerMedia software. APEX Voice Communications’ Video Conferencing System is a wideband / HD voice and HD videoconferencing platform that integrates with existing 3G / 4G and IP / IMS converged networks, supporting multimedia like PowerPoint, live TV and social media streams joined into a conference, adding a personalized dimension to the call. LiveSein’s solution combines telephony technology with the capabilities of the Web to form an Internet application that it says fosters collaboration among distant partners via online meetings while managing working documents and mobile video conferences. Telepo’s technology enables service providers to offer enterprises advanced business communications as a service under their own brands. Fostering functionality across communication tools
• Most of us will never know just how keen we might have gotten about the Cisco Cius personal device, based on the Android OS, as the company announced it is ceasing development work in recognition that bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and Apple / Android tablets (made by others) rule. The company claims that its own research indicates that 95% of companies have their own BYOD policies. While we are skeptical that this number is a true reflection of how many companies really have policies related to BYOD, the move makes sense and frees the company to focus on porting its Jabber voice, video, IM and presence clients to accommodate BYOD. Jabber clients already are available for Apple iOS, RIM BlackBerry devices, and Windows PC’s, and are expected to be delivered to the many other Android-based tablets hitting the market.
Volume 13 Issue #13 6-June-12
News in Brief
Cisco Cius
• Saying it’s a “win-win-win” for education and its stakeholders, Steve Case and Ted Leonsis of AOL fame and their Revolution Growth Fund are investing in lecture capture vendor Echo360. Echo360 provides live and on demand streaming, archival, search, and other blended learning capabilities. Both Echo360 and Case have signaled they seek to expand the core “capture” market and over time foster through its customers additional innovations around blended learning. This is Revolution Growth’s third investment since
PAGE 2Volume 13 Issue #13 6-June-12
for enterprises, Telepo’s Business Communication Solution (BCS) voice conference services include HD video conferencing, enabling service providers to offer this service securely via the Internet as well as on mobile networks.
• SimpleSignal, a cloud-based UC&C provider, has announced it has launched a mobile video communications and conferencing application that works across a variety of mobile, desktop and Telepresence / video-enabled devices, via Wi-Fi or 3G / 4G network. Among its features are one number for all connections, including text / SMS; point-to-point video calls; multipoint videoconferencing; four-digit dialing between extensions; and the ability to swap calls between mobile and desktop phones. While we root for newcomers, we wonder about a company that touts “MCU-less” calls and “call recording” as killer apps in 2012.
• PGi has announced the launch of GlobalMeet 3.0. The 3.0 release highlights include an iPad app that lets users host mobile meetings with all the controls of a web meeting from the desktop, including sharing files, which will be available soon in the Apple App Store; a new desktop application for starting and scheduling meetings with a single click, monitoring meeting activity, and dragging-and-dropping files into a meeting directly from the desktop; an integrated softphone that allows users to talk via their computer; full-screen desktop viewing; and an enhanced cloud-based content library that lets users easily access and manage files, presentations and recordings directly from their meeting — even from mobile devices. Additionally, PGi’s other service,
iMeet, has been upgraded to include screen sharing, HD video at lower bandwidth, auto-connect for avoiding dial-in or dial-out from iPads and iPhones, and Spotlight Cube, a way to enhance the profile information of one’s contacts.
• Showing that it is interested in making collaboration a feature of its services, as evidenced by its early 2011 acquisition of dimdim, Salesforce has added to its services with new IM client and screen sharing software. IM is in the form of Chatter IM, a combo collaboration and task management application that is meant to drive ad hoc interactions. Chat lists are available for specific teams or groups or projects, and chat options are designed to be context-sensitive and accessed in a variety of user-driven formats. Chat capabilities are available for the many third-party apps that use Salesforce. Reportedly the Chatter developers are focusing on compliance issues, in particular archiving and discovery. The screen sharing portion of this announcement will not be available until Q3 2012.
• ClearOne has announced that it is expanding its professional audio product line with a new microphone array that includes patent-pending audio beamforming with adaptive steering and next generation AEC technology. The Beamforming Microphone Array includes 24 microphone elements that can steer its pickup pattern towards participants in the room and reject unwanted noise and reflections. ClearOne will be exhibiting its new array for the first time at next week’s InfoComm. WR of course will be reporting on what we see and hear at InfoComm as well.
• Brother International Corp, best known for its printer and imaging business, has launched its OmniJoin web and videoconferencing service. This appears to be a cloud-based web conferencing service that includes HD video. The standard, single-host version starts at $49 per month, and allows up to 30 meeting attendees, of which up to 12 can be “video attendees” with simultaneously-shared video. OmniJoin Pro starts at $79 per month, and supports larger numbers of total and video attendees. Both versions are available in annual licenses, including 12 months of service for the price of 10 (audio conferencing minutes are not included). Brother also
WR & UC+C Analyst Appearances & Events
21 June, London Richard Norris, Enabling mobile and immersive collaboration — how it all works together. BT Conferencing & Polycom, 17:30 PM, Polycom UK Ltd.
26 June, Online Andrew W. Davis & Ira Weinstein, Telepresence is Dead. Long Live Telepresence. 10:00 AM EDT
10 July, New Orleans Alan D. Greenberg, Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012
17-18 July 2012 Philadelphia
WR Collaboration Summit, Doubletree by Hilton Hotel.
13 September, Chicago Andrew W. Davis, AVI-SPL, Collaboration Expo 2012
9 October, 2012, Boston WR CSP Summit, Hotel Commonwealth
offers larger enterprises customizable packages. This appears to be the first of a series of service offerings that will eventually include scanning and workflow solutions. While there is nothing about the service at Brother’s website, a separately branded OmniJoin site has all the details.
• Montpellier, France-based Tixeo, which makes the WorkSpace3D web conferencing software and also offers videoconferencing endpoints, has introduced its H323 & SIP Gateway for WorkSpace3D 5.0, a gateway to allow interoperability between its products and services with industry-standard systems and bridges.
• UK-based AuDeo Systems has introduced its Managed Video Conferencing Services, a one-stop option for an integrated and customized video conferencing solution that includes equipment options, installation and maintenance, and global end-to-end managed services. The company is delivering this service in partnership with BCS Global. Meanwhile, Audio Visual Machines Ltd. (AVM), also based in the UK, reported several weeks back that it is Cisco’s first European partner to achieve Video Advanced Plus status.
• Wowza Media Systems designated online video distribution network provider iStreamLive as an official Wowza Streaming Partner.
• Five years of development and more than $4 million have reportedly resulted in Easymeeting.net. This cloud-based videoconferencing service from Easy Meeting includes EasyConference, a service that enables several videoconferencing systems and mobile options to connect into a “virtual meeting room” together. The service also reportedly includes a new way of dialing (easyNumbers), hosting of a video phone book (easymeeting.net Directory), recordable meeting services (WebTV), and HD video calls. The company is offering 14-day trials of its suite of videoconferencing services. Easy Meeting also announced a partnership with WhyGo’s global scheduling service for video public rooms.
• Vidyo has continued its global march, now targeting India with a new partner, Sify Technologies. Sify videomeet is a new videoconferencing-as-a-service offering that is powered by Vidyo. Sify is among the largest ICT providers in India, with a reach into more than 700 cities and towns in the country.
• Meanwhile ZTE is continuing its own global march, introducing into the UK via partnering with Touchline Video UK several new HD videoconferencing systems. Touchline Video will distribute the ZTE T700 4MX and T700 8MX 1080p integrated systems, while also adding over time other ZTE products to the UK market.
• For years we have heard that videoconferencing was coming to the living room nearest you — Cisco
Introducing one of the WR Bulletin Sponsors
AVI-SPL is a global leader in audio video communications technology, providing comprehensive solutions and services for professional AV installation, telepresence and video conferencing, digital media systems, control rooms and network operations centers, hotel rental services, event staging and production. Headquartered in Tampa, Fla., AVI-SPL has highly-trained and certified system engineers throughout 32 U.S. offices and an international network of solution providers in 30 countries.
Please visit www.avispl.com for more information or connect with AVI-SPL on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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.
— Here’s Feel Me is an iOS app concept that shows in real time what your texting partner is doing. Created by Marco Triverio at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Here’s Feel Me lets users see a small red dot that shows where on the screen the other person’s finger is
currently pressing. When your finger and the other person’s finger touch your screens in the same place, there’s a vibration or a sound meant to create some type of emotional or physical connection.
and its umi was the latest casualty in that charge of the light brigade. Maybe a cable provider in the U.S. best known as leading the charge to meter bandwidth has the answer, as it has introduced videoconferencing to your living room TV. Comcast has launched its Skype on Xfinity service, a Skype-based HD videoconferencing service available initially to its consumers in Atlanta, Boston, Augusta, Ga., Chicago, Detroit, Harrisburg, Pa., Indianapolis, Miami, Seattle and Pittsburgh. Additional markets will launch through the summer. The service will allow consumers to make and receive Skype-to-Skype video and audio calls or send instant messages via Skype on a TV while watching TV shows at the same time, and accept incoming Skype calls during a TV show with the help of Caller ID. Consumers can import Skype friends into a global address book that also can contain Facebook, Outlook, Gmail and smartphone contacts, and communicate with the hundreds of millions of connected Skype users around the globe, whether they are on a Skype-enabled TV, PC or mobile device. The service is $9.95 monthly, and is only available to customers who also subscribe to a qualified Comcast triple play service. Aha! Now one way has become apparent for how Microsoft thinks it can monetize Skype: find cable operators that can drive Skype onto television sets – and an entirely new market will be born. Or so we’ll see.
• Joining the ranks of many who have come before, Huawei has joined the OVCC as vendor # 24.
• Continuing our ongoing tracking of odd developments in the UC&C mega-verse, we find two items of interest this week.
Though Friendship Can Be a Burden
Everyone Can Use a Tele-Friend….
— Leave it to a Japanese university to come up with a teleconferencing shoulder robot. Yamagata University researchers have created the MH-2, a wearable miniaturized shoulder-resident robot that can be connected to friends and colleagues elsewhere. The MH (miniature humanoid) creature is a telepresence-based robot that works like an avatar for a remote operator. The remote operator needs access to a motion capture environment (Microsoft, pay attention here with the Kinect), and the avatar will emulate the speech and gestures of the remote operator. Note that the backpack of the local humanoid has 22 actuators and is simply a proof-of-concept device, like others similar “out there” ideas we have seen over the years. Kudos to Yuichi Tsumaki, Fumiaki Ono, and Taisuke Tsukuda of Yamagata University, who presented the “20-DOF Miniature Humanoid MH-2: a Wearable Communication System” last month at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Know someone who speaks French or Russian?The Bulletin is now available in French and Russian, courtesy of Iris Resources and TrueConf, respectively. Send your colleagues to www.wainhouse.com/mail to sign up.
We’re pleased to unveil the lineup for the Collaboration Summit at the Philadelphia Doubletree Center City on July 17-18. While
a few additional speakers are dotting their t’s and crossing their i’s, we highlight here a very full event that will cover every major aspect of unified communications and collaboration technologies, from pharma and healthcare to streaming and UC, from
mobility and web conferencing to video and B2B. William Moore, EVP & CTO of CareCore National, will explain in his keynote the many ways collaboration technologies can transform the delivery of healthcare. And no fewer than six WR analysts will be on hand to deliver their take on industry and market trends — including our two newest analysts, Stefan Karapetkov and Steve Vonder Haar.
17-18 JULY 2012
WR Collaboration Summit Lineup Unveiled
WAINHOUSE RESEARCH
COLLABORATIONSUMMIT 2012Philadelphia
G O L D S P O N S O R S S I L V E R S P O N S O R
Enterprise IP Communications: The State of the State
Andrew Davis, Senior Partner,
Wainhouse Research
Lessons Learned for Effective Deployment of Immersion Video
