Ask Dr. Ann: What’s the Best Videoconferencing Software?
Is there a “best” videoconferencing software? When would you recommend someone use Google Meet versus Microsoft Teams versus Zoom? The “best” videoconferencing software is the one that meets the needs of your organization and users, and too few AV/IT folks take the time to find out what their users truly need. In today’s environment, all […]
No More ‘I Am Sharing My Screen’
Yes, we suffer from more than just Zoom fatigue. The ProAV industry also suffers from “would-be-Zoom fatigue.” The weariness that comes with hearing about another contender that hopes to knock out remote work incumbents like Zoom and Teams. Yet, Switchboard comes with more spark. Spark Capital, that is. Switchboard raised $13.8 million backed by Spark […]
Vanco International Unveils the PulseAudio Collaboration Video Bar (PA-CVB1)
Vanco International today unveiled an all-in-one video collaboration product, the PulseAudio Collaboration Video Bar (PA-CVB1). The PA-CVB1 has a modern soundbar form factor, a built-in six-ray beamforming microphone and a 4K ePTZ camera embedded in its center. The PA-CVB1’s camera is equipped with smart framing, which automatically adjusts to frame participants; auto-tracking to automatically follow […]
Videoconferencing Is Terrible! So What Can We Do About It?
OK … put down the pitchforks. There’s a method here. I have had the unique experience of having a front-row seat regarding videoconferencing (VC) over the last 30 years. As I have watched it evolve, I have seen not just WHAT changed but, more importantly, WHY it changed. At the same time, I have also […]
How to Get the Job You Want — Selling Your Value: Part 3
This is the third installment of my series on getting — and keeping — the job you want by selling your value. The past columns in this series can be found here. I think of interviewing for a job as a similar methodology to meeting with a potential client to get to the next step […]
Looking Back To Go Forward — We Had the Keys All Along
At the start of January 2020, working from home was a carefully guarded privilege. Some professions — and some job categories — had the chance to stay home and do work on their computers. Some people (mothers in particular) changed their lives to have the ability to work from home. Some employers embraced the idea. […]
I Miss ‘POT’ Calls
Remember way back when, when phone calls didn’t include video? I miss these days. Unbeknownst to my clients — sans the occasional siren or Harley Davidson motorcyclist, there were many, many times where I would jump on a call with them and walk, and walk and walk while strategizing. I loved it. Not only was […]
Zoom Updates Zoom Meetings, Webinars Software, Hardware for Zoom Rooms
Zoom just delivered a few new updates for the Zoom Meetings and Zoom Video Webinars application as well as announced new hardware solutions for Zoom Rooms. Adding something called “vanishing pen annotation,”a Zoom user can now highlight text or objects on the shared screen without having to undo or erase highlight annotations. Use the vanishing pen […]
The Evolution of Videoconferencing
Many years ago, I worked for a facilities-based CLEC selling POTS (plain old telephone services), DSL, T1 (1.5 Mbps), bonded T1 lines (3 Mbps), phone systems and VoIP (voice-over-IP) solutions. This experience helped me to really understand the business criticality of quality-of-service internet bandwidth and continues to help me to this day. After IT/telecom, I […]
Frost & Sullivan’s Global Video Conferencing Report: Global UCC Devices to Be Up 6x by 2025, With Revenues of $7.8 Billion
As businesses and educational institutions prepare for the return to work, meeting rooms and classrooms will see heavy technology investments to support hybrid work and learning. Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, State of the Global Video Conferencing Devices Market, Forecast to 2025, finds that by 2025, the number of video conferencing devices, including room-based endpoints, […]
Crew Call: It’s a Jungle in Here
Have you seen the movie “Groundhog Day”? You know, the one where Bill Murray is forced to repeat one day over and over? Well, here it is a quarter past Groundhog’s Day 2021, and I don’t think any of us expected that we’d still be conducting our lives — business and otherwise — online. But […]
What I Learned By Hosting 32 Sessions With Different Topics and Speakers During the Pandemic
I formally joined Zignage (CMS software solution company) on Feb. 3, 2020, and attended ISE 2020 in Amsterdam from Feb. 10-12. On March 3, I attended the New York Build 2020 Expo at the Javits Center and continued going into New York City for meetings — March 9 (my office) and March 12 (small vendor […]
It’s Casual Friday Every Day Now!
I’ve written at length this past year about how COVID has affected, well, everything. The adaptions we’ve all had to make to our changing circumstances have been pervasive. I was just organizing all my paperwork to send to our accountant for my taxes. My total travel/work expenses for 2020 added up to $440. In a […]
Zooming Right Along
Skype, FaceTime and now Zoom. Each of the past several iterations of videoconferencing have a few things in common. First, they became part of the consumer lexicon, becoming verbs, in fact. Second, they became popular because of their use by, and availability to the general consumer. Only Zoom, however, grew at what can be described […]
When are We Going to Start to Pay More Attention to Nvidia? Probably Now.
This month, Nvidia announces an open beta for Omniverse, a 3D simulation and collaboration platform — and Maxine, a cloud-native streaming video AI platform. It’s now a phygital world — and as the physical and digital worlds fuse to simulate reality in real time and with pixel perfect detail, the company that AV should pay […]
Open Rooms, The Answer to Hybrid Meetings in Your Workplace
THIS IS A PROMOTED POST Times are changing, and today’s hybrid working world — with some people at home and some in the office — means team collaboration is more necessary than ever. We’ve got a great story to share with you today, and we hope you’ll read it in full, but let’s be realistic; […]
Microsoft Teams Playing Catch-Up With Zoom; Adds Nifty Custom Layouts, Better Breakout Rooms and Killer Meeting Recap Features
There’s no doubt that Microsoft Teams has been playing catch-up with Zoom for months; some would argue years. But, this week, Microsoft upped its game by adding a host of features that even Zoom power-users will love. Here’s a summary look at each one: Together Mode: Together mode re-imagines meeting experiences to help participants feel […]
Office Based Headsets — A Key Element of the Home Working Revolution
By Kane McKenna Futuresource Consulting The rate of growth in the office based headset market has been steadily increasing in recent years. A key driver of this has been the rising importance of video conferencing, explored in Futuresource’s 2020 Video Conferencing report. Many end users have been looking to improve their videoconferencing experience, leading to […]
Surge in Corporate Video Use Is Fueling Growth in Entry Level Professional Video Products
By Chris Evans Futuresource Consulting The challenge for many businesses to facilitate home working at scale has proven to be a major catalyst in making video an everyday business tool. This has been one of the most significant operational and cultural changes businesses have faced in decades and has proven to be a fast-track education […]
A Secret Productivity Killer Called “Double Join” Haunts Most of Our Meetings – And We Deserve Better
I’d never heard the term “double join” until a few months ago on a call with one of our board members, John Case, who is a great resource to talk with if you’re researching the world of video conferencing. John spent a long time at Microsoft building the Office 365 product family and now puts […]
A UCC Update from Futuresource and rAVe
Videoconferencing solutions continue to move into the commercial foreground, with videoconferencing hardware achieving pre-COVID-19 volume and value growth of 28% and 9% respectively in 2019, according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting. The report covers all aspects of videoconferencing hardware; it also combines desk research, sales data from vendors across seven key geographies and […]
Here’s What’s Going to Happen With Wireless Sharing/Wireless Collaboration Post-COVID-19
By Adam Cox Futuresource Consulting It is not an exaggeration to say that the world as we know it will be forever changed once we emerge from the all-engulfing COVID-19, with one of the major shifts being how we choose to work effectively in the workplace moving forward. Ultimately, collaboration technology is at the center […]
COVID-19 and the New Era of Online Video Conferencing
By Adam Cox Futuresource Consulting Populations are adjusting to COVID-19, with social distancing orders having compelled people to find alternatives to face-to-face meetings. As a result, cloud video conferencing solutions have never been more popular. With hundreds of millions of people now working from home, vendors such as Cisco, Lifesize and Microsoft have responded to […]
Microsoft Teams, Zoom and BlueJeans Have Another New Competitor: Kaltura
Less than a week after Facebook Launched Messenger Rooms — a videoconferencing platform designed to take on Zoom and Microsoft Teams — Kaltura, known for its lecture capture and storage platform, is entering the videoconferencing market, too. Kaltura Meetings, according to the company, is a “video communication and collaboration suite of products to take enterprise […]
Pexip’s Q1 2020 Earnings Seem to Indicate It’s COVID-19-Proof
The video communications provider, Pexip, today announced a record 50% year-on-year growth in contracted annual recurring revenue (ARR) after the first quarter of 2020, further enhancing the recently reported growth of 32% in 2019. Q1 2020 finished with a significant increase in delta annual recurring revenue (DARR) of 9.5MUSD, giving a total contracted annual recurring […]
Shifting to a Remote Collaboration World
With everything that is going on around us, we are seeing plenty on the news and about folks having to work remotely. Over the coming weeks and months, we will see quite a bit about how we’re not keeping up and that business continuity is failing. Based on what I am observing first-hand from my […]
Lifesize Releases Admin Console Capabilities Aimed at IT Administrators
Lifesize has released a new set of capabilities designed to help IT administrators remotely support videoconferencing through the Lifesize Admin Console. Available immediately worldwide, Lifesize customers can now leverage real-time reporting, refreshed dashboards and live meeting statistics to monitor network performance, call quality and organization-wide videoconferencing usage. With real-time reporting and live meeting statistics, admins […]
Zoom Releases New Zoom Phone Features
Zoom released a handful of new Zoom Phone features recently including expanded on-net calling and additional contact center integration. And, the Zoom App Marketplace just topped 200 app offerings. Here are some of the highlights from its latest Zoom platform release. Zoom Phone: On-net calling to audio conference phone numbers: If you’re a metered and […]
ClearOne Receives Zoom Certification for UNITE Videoconferencing Cameras
ClearOne has received Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (“Zoom”) certification for its UNITE professional videoconferencing cameras. The Zoom-certified UNITE 50 4K camera is USB plug-and-play ready with a 120-degree field-of-view, digital zoom and the ability to pair with any microphone/speaker combination. The camera’s ultra-wide-angle field-of-view is ideally suited for visual communication and collaboration in huddle spaces […]
Want to Use Zoom to Broadcast a Meeting via an Entire Digital Signage Network? Enplug Can Do That
Enplug has added the ability to broadcast Zoom video conferences via Enplug’s digital signage platform. Enplug’s new Zoom App is freely available to Enplug users via the company’s App Market. Enplug’s new Zoom App streamlines the process of broadcasting live events and presentations to multiple screens. From within Enplug’s Zoom App, users create a new […]
Pexip Adds Auto-Framing via AI to UCC Meetings
Pexip announced the release of “Adaptive Composition” to add real-time face detection, auto-framing and optimized use of screen real estate during UCC calls. The features seem pretty straightforward, but a lot of artificial intelligence went into making this happen: Participant auto-framing: Often, users do not realize how their video camera is framed in a meeting, […]
Collaboration in 2020 and Beyond: Predictions for Next Year
By David Danto Director of UC Strategy and Research, Poly Turning the page into a new decade gives us the opportunity to put our past into perspective and predict where we’re going. In the world of unified communications and collaboration, this exercise reveals a space that is eliminating most of the poor experiences and exploding […]
