Fonality CEO Replacement a Long Time Coming

A number of sources have picked up the news that VoIP pioneer Fonality has named a new CEO. He is David Scult, former general manager of Microsoft Office 365. The reports also typically noted that Fonality gave no reason for the departure of the former CEO. That would be Dean Mansfield, who replaced founding CEO Chris Lyman in early 2010. What most of the reports missed was that Mansfield actually left the company long ago.

The Top 10 VoIP & Video Conferencing Developments of 2011

Video conferencing was a lot more interesting to watch in 2011 than was VoIP. It wasn't that nothing happened in VoIP during the year. It was just that a lot more happened in video conferencing. This was especially true in the SMB space. Early summer saw a slew of significant announcements from vendors and providers. These announcements figured prominently in the VoIP Evolution report "SMB Video Conferencing: Getting Beyond Clouds & Interoperability."

Vidyo's Virtualization Makes Cloud Video Conferencing Easier

It's little exaggeration to say that Vidyo was meant for the cloud. The high-profile startup provides video conferencing technology that does away with MCUs, the multipoint control units that combine individual video streams to create multiparty conferences. Instead, Vidyo employs video routing software that runs on standard servers. It's useful for companies that want to video conference but can't afford expensive MCUs. And a recent announcement makes another advantage clear: Vidyo's approach makes it easy to move video conferencing to the cloud.

Cisco's Cloud TelePresence Move Complicates SMB Video Conferencing Choices

Cisco's recently introduced cloud TelePresence offering considerably complicates life for small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) shopping for video conferencing solutions. On one hand, it adds an impressive new option to the list of available products. On the other, it increases the number of questions companies must answer before making their purchasing decisions. In short, while the introduction broadens the range of choices for SMBs looking to use video conferencing on a regular basis, it also makes their decision-making process more difficult.

CounterPath, iMeet, ooVoo Advance Mobile Video Conferencing

Judging from the pace of recent announcements, mobile video conferencing may be a hotter topic than SMB video conferencing. In the past week alone, at least three suppliers have come out with new offerings. One is CounterPath, which is adding video conferencing capabilities to the next edition of its Bria soft phone for iPhone. This is the first step in a strategy to extend integrated voice, messaging, presence and video calling to all leading PC and mobile platforms.

Infonetics Report Shows Speed, Complexity of Mobile VoIP Growth

A new report by Infonetics Research shows that sorting through mobile VoIP options won't be simple anytime soon, even as user numbers explode. It starts with the fact that there are two main methods of delivering VoIP to mobile devices. One is over-the-top (OTT), in which the voice calls travel over carrier-provided data networks. The other is via LTE (long-term evolution), a technology that lets carriers themselves deliver voice calls over IP links to the handset. Prominent OTT providers include Skype, fring, Line2, Nimbuzz, Rebtel, Truphone, Viber, Vopium and others. Verizon Wireless will introduce native mobile VoIP over LTE in 2012.

Polycom's ViVu Acquisition Boosts Availability, Flexibility of Video Conferencing

Polycom's acquisition of ViVu, Inc. adds an important tool to the video conferencing vendor's arsenal, by letting it extend video collaboration capabilities to everyone with a PC. Video conferencing has traditionally operated through dedicated endpoints, including hardware such as room system or desktop video phones and client software. ViVu makes software that makes it possible to embed video communication capabilities in Web applications. The move is particularly important because Polycom technology serves as the foundation for a number of prominent commercial video conferencing services. These include 8x8's Virtual Room, BroadSoft's BroadCloud hosted cloud video conferencing platform and Telesphere's VideoConnect, which runs on BroadCloud.

Nefsis Cloud-Based Video Conferencing Adds Multi-Layer Whiteboarding

Cloud-based video conferencing and online meeting provider Nefsis has added multilayer whiteboard capabilities to its set of online collaboration tools . The new capabilities allow multiple participants in a video conferencing to add text, graphics and annotations to a shared whiteboard in real time. Online collaboration tools, which can include document, desktop and even lives streaming media sharing, represent a significant enhancement of basic video conferencing services. A number of factors, however, make such integration technically difficult. It's particularly challenging, for example, when multiple types of endpoints, and particularly hardware endpoints, are involved. The Nefsis service uses Windows-based client software.

Will SMB Video Conferencing Take Off? Much Depends on the Providers

There has been considerable controversy over whether the SMB (small to medium-size business) video conferencing market is about to take off. That's understandable: video conferencing has been a lot of false starts in the past. The recent VoIP Evolution report on the topic describes a number of signs the takeoff is imminent. These include the success of higher-end video conferencing products, the growing popularity of cloud-based services in general, the success of hosted VoIP, the runaway growth of consumer video chat and others. Also persuasive is the number of competitors jumping into the market: there were eight significant announcements in June and July alone.

VoIP Evolution Report Dispels SMB Video Conferencing Hype

Serious excitement surrounds the SMB (small to medium-size business) video conferencing space these days. In June and July alone, no fewer than eight companies – 8x8, Blue Jeans Network, BroadSoft, InFocus, LifeSize, Polycom, Telesphere and Vidtel – announced new hardware, services, tie-ups or some combination thereof. All of the announcements represented significant investments of time, effort and resources. And together, they indicated a widespread optimism that the market is about to take off.

Even in pre-takeoff mode, though, the market has already spawned a hefty body of conventional wisdom. Most of it takes the form of ardent convictions surrounding clouds and interoperability. One of these is the belief that cloud solutions are the ideal way to meet almost every SMB video conferencing need. A related one is faith that providing interoperability is the surest route to success for cloud providers. A new VoIP Evolution report, SMB Video Conferencing: Getting Beyond Clouds & Interoperability, both explains why it's necessary to get beyond such conventional wisdom, and provides a method for doing so.

Will Consumers Ever Pay for Home Video Conferencing Products?

When Cisco announced that it was going to stop selling its ūmi "home telepresence" product to consumers, the reason seemed clear. Although ūmi offered a superb video conferencing experience, it was obviously too expensive for even the affluent households the networking vendor was targeting. But Cisco's real mistake wasn't wanting too much money for its product, it was wanting any money at all for it. In a market where competitors were giving away video communication applications as part of other consumer products, wanting to earn revenue selling a dedicated home video conferencing product was a recipe for frustration.

Adding PSTN Connectivity Advances Nefsis Video Conferencing Service

Nefsis offers an excellent illustration of the growing power and capabilities of Internet video conferencing services for small to medium-size businesses. The San Diego-based company offers a cloud-based conferencing service with document and app sharing, text chat and the like. The highlight of the offering is high-quality video conferencing via Web cam-equipped PCs running downloadable client software. It offers 1080p resolution, 30 frames per second speed and effortless firewall and/or proxy traversal, for meetings with as many as 20 or more participants. Given that the service runs over high-speed Internet connections, it's natural that the audio portion of the conference uses VoIP by default.

StartupCamp Winning Formula: Integrating Voice, Video and Social Networking

One of the great attractions of IP-based voice and video communication is their capacity for integration with other applications and services. Such integration becomes even more compelling when it involves social networks, which represent the hottest tech trend going. So it was no surprise when the winner of the recent StartupCamp Comms Edition was a company that had created a platform for integrating voice, video and chat with Facebook, as a tool to help students study better together.

StartupCamp Highlights Breadth of Comms Innovation

There are a lot of events these days that showcase promising startups. The attention they generate can make a huge difference for companies with a compelling story to tell. The winners often, though not always, go on to big-time commercial success. Unfortunately, these events tend to be somewhat general. That is, they typically don't have a lot to offer anyone interested in a specific technology or industry such as VoIP.

The Top 25 VoIP and Video Developments of 2010

After starting as the year of HD voice, 2010 ended as the year of video communication. Video in fact became so prominent that it earned a place in the title of this list. Announcements about new video communication products and services were so numerous they became routine. As the year progressed, it became clear that video conferencing/calling was no longer a luxury for the corporate and government elite, but was well on the way to becoming a commodity for the masses. Ordinary individuals will soon be making video calls with little more thought than they now give to picking up a telephone. Making that happen, however, will be a complex challenge for vendors and service providers.

A variety of other factors shaped voice and visual communication during the year. Chief among these were developments in mobile VoIP and video calling, along with an acceleration of the move to cloud-based voice services. Politics and the weather played unusually high-profile roles as well. So did the negative: Unlike last year, not all the important developments were advances – some were downright problematic. But even the negative developments had some constructive aspects. Skype of course figured prominently in many of the developments. So pervasive was the influence of the Internet VoIP pioneer that it seemed that the corporate slogan of "Skype Everywhere" applied to its appearances in headlines as well.