Can Vidyo Take the Low Road to Personal Telepresence?

The president of Vidyo, Ofer Shapiro, took the stage at NetEvents for a keynote outlining his new video conferencing architecture that aims to make video communication universally available.

Vidyo has devised a way to offer videoconferencing that links several locations simultaneously. The screen is split in two, so anyone participating in a conference with two other locations can see one on each side. OK, so you've seen the split screen before ...what's different here?

Shapiro says: "The difference in what we do is that instead of a delay of a second, we are as instant as voice."

Vidyo's software is very resilient against the effects of packet loss. It also adapts incoming video to the resolution of the receiving device.

Shapiro came up with an architecture for solving videoconferencing transmission problems over the internet. Then he raised capital and hired a team of engineers to put it all together. The company has applied for 22 patents and the first is already approved. Last October, Vidyo was awarded a patent on its VidyoRouter architecture, which leverages H.264 SVC, the latest standard in video compression technology.

Call it a Swiss Army knife for SMB communications. From Silicon Valley, V2 Technology brings its first video enhanced All-Communication-in-One server for SMB users. It is a Universal Connection platform based on its innovative and Video-QoS-efficient architecture.

V2 UC Server consolidates multiple communication systems and networks such as PBX (PSTN and IP), switch/router, video conference, and video surveillance into a single highly integrated one-box system.

It supports up to 100 concurrent voice users, up to 10 concurrent telepresence Read more...

Mirial releases ClearSea, a desktop videoconferencing engineered for enterprise, healthcare and educational markets.

ClearSea is available both as a physical appliance and as a VMware-based virtual appliance.

Virtualization provides the flexibility of a software-based approach, as well as the plug-and-play benefits usually associated with stand-alone hardware appliances.

Based on a client/server architecture, ClearSea provides a HD desktop client (pc and Mac) and the ability to connect any legacy device (companies can make the Read more...

Polycom launches the Open Collaboration Network to improve productivity through voice and video communications.

Bringing together AT&T, Avaya/Nortel, BroadSoft, British Telecom, IBM, Juniper, HP, Microsoft, and Siemens, the program seeks to encourage interoperability and connectivity so partners can deliver integrated, end-to-end solutions.

(And, of course, Polycom is looking to leverage partners to balance out the new challenge from Cisco/Tandberg.)

Hear all about it in a podcast from Jim Kruger, Polycom VP of Solution Product Marketing Read more...