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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 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 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 […]
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 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, […]
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 […]
Remember when Polycom and Cisco were always mentioned in the same sentence? Seems like a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, huh? Do you remember when we were all saying, “Why don’t Polycom and Cisco just make their stuff interoperable?” Well, that was what led to their ultimate demise — in […]
Kandao Technology is now shipping its 8K, 360-degree videoconferencing camera dubbed Kandao Meeting. Kandao Meeting combines two high-quality fisheye lenses, eight mic arrays and a speaker. It can be put in the center of a meeting room to capture all the attendees at 8K resolution, while automatically focusing on people as they speak. The remote […]
Earlier this month at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced that soon Microsoft Teams, the company’s web based video meeting and productivity applications, would be natively compatible with Zoom and later WebEx. If you missed this part of the story, rAVe founder Gary Kayye wrote about it here and it’s been a very popular article, especially in […]
TrueConf announced this week a new offering called TrueConf Group, a videoconferencing endpoint with built-in MCU that boasts high-quality video and audio clarity. TrueConf Group will be available for shipping globally sometime this fall in multiple configurations as ready-to-use kits for meeting rooms. TrueConf Group includes: 1080p60 video and content and enables users to share […]
Jabra announced today that Zoom Video Communications, Inc. selected the Jabra PanaCast as the video solution for its new telepresence capability, Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching. Announced this week at Zoomtopia, Zoom’s user conference, the Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching is an added feature to Zoom Rooms. (Zoom Rooms equips every sized conference room with all of […]
Zoom Video Communications just announced at Zoomtopia 2019 (its annual user conference) that major additions are coming to its software platforms. All of these, which are outlined below, will be become available on the platform by the end of January 2020. New Zoom Rooms Appliances: These are purpose-built Zoom Rooms hardware devices that Zoom is […]
Ah, September. Back to school, and, for many of my clients who are coming home from the Hamptons, back to work. For AV rental companies, in most parts of the country, business will be picking up again as their clients return to meetings. And for many of us it will be time to plan for […]
As part of my quest to better understand the UC/AV space – I’ve been reading a lot of research reports. This week I put two reports together to realize something pretty interesting: The professional video cable market is predicted to reach revenues of $2 billion by 2024. If you sell cable to the enterprise – […]
Key Digital just launched the KD-CAMUSB, a USB camera with pan, tilt and 10x zoom functionality aimed at video conferencing and capture applications in huddle spaces, conference rooms, board rooms, lecture halls, etc. The KD-CAMUSB features multiple mounting options on the wall and ceiling with included mounting hardware and may also be table surface mounted. […]
Jabra today launches the Jabra PanaCast, a smart panoramic-4K plug-and-play video solution certified for Microsoft Teams. Jabra PanaCast is aimed as a UCC camera for huddle rooms and meeting spaces as well as collaboration. Jabra PanaCast uses three 13-megapixel cameras that work together as one via core technology embedded in the built-in Jabra PanaCast Vision […]
I participated in a unified communications panel at InfoComm about three years ago. It was a great panel with representation from companies like Cisco, Polycom, and (the now defunct) Tely Labs. I was the oddball of the bunch; promising the audience that a focus on software to improve proximate meetings was needed at least as […]
If you read our industry press at all (and I hope you do) you will note large numbers of articles on two subjects: 1. The “Huddle Room” and 2. Drones When two subjects like these fascinate an industry, it is almost inevitable that they combine in some way. (I consider this the “you got peanut […]
Last week was an eventful one for Zoom. In less than twenty-four hours, we had: The revelation of multiple security vulnerabilities in the popular Zoom conferencing software A [now updated] defensive statement by Zoom, dismissing concerns related to same Public outcry A reversal of course and introduction of an immediate patch for one vulnerability and […]
Poly today announced the Poly G7500, which is basically a hardware-based VTC codec, an EagleEye IV camera (or EagleEye Cube USB), a Poly IP Microphone, a Bluetooth Remote control and cabling all packaged together in a way that integrates audio, wireless content sharing and 4K video for small and medium-sized meeting rooms for those that […]
Extron says that Extron AV control can now be part of any Lifesize videoconferencing room. You can now add Extron control to the Lifesize Icon meeting room systems, providing enhanced control functionality to their video conferencing solutions. This collaboration with Lifesize allows our TouchLink Pro touchpanels to provide a familiar Lifesize interface to control audio […]
Acoustic Magic is using InfoComm to introduce the Voice Tracker III, which is based on the technology of the Voice Tracker I, but has 2 dB better signal to noise ratio and a flatter frequency response curve leading to a brighter sound quality. The $450 Voice Tracker III is designed for lecture and meeting recording […]
Evolving how we understand and design collaborative spaces One of the most consistent things we see in corporate facilities/classrooms/lecture halls worldwide is that they have been equipped with some manner of technology package that is there for the users of that space to better communicate with others. And one of the most consistent things about […]
Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with dozens of AV and IT professionals tasked with deploying and supporting enterprise video conferencing. Although every project is different, a few themes seem to be consistent across all my conversations, and so I’ve come up with the following “notes from the AV/IT trenches.” […]
This is the tweet heard ‘round the AV world — or at least, it should have been: The March 21st tweet from R/GA read: A thousand years from now humans will have shed their physical form and ascended to a higher state of consciousness and conference room AV systems still won’t work. — R/GA (@RGA) […]
Blue Jeans Network, Inc. today announced its plan to offer BlueJeans Rooms-as-a-Service featuring Dolby Voice Room in the near future. BlueJeans Rooms-as-a-Service featuring Dolby Voice Room will be a new service-based subscription model for quickly adopting Dolby’s hardware with BlueJeans’ enterprise-grade cloud meetings platform. The Room-as-a-Service model provides IT decision makers with the benefits of […]
Oblong Industries just announced something called Rumpus, a new visual collaboration application for purely virtual teams. Oblong is marketing it saying that Rumpus makes web conferencing both content and context rich. It provides simultaneous access to shared screens from meeting participants, and delivers a new layer of communication with shared cursors, annotation and emojis for […]