New Consortium For Video Call Market

The Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC) has formally launched, with membership open to stakeholders in the visual communications industry who hope to accelerate the adoption of business-to-business video communications.

OVCC's goal is to close the connectivity and service gaps that have caused difficulty with video communications between businesses, by specifying use of standards, best practices, and connectivity agreements. The goal is to let service providers deliver a consistent business-to-business video experience beyond corporate firewalls and proprietary video platforms as early as mid-2012.

Among the founders and members for the OVCC board are AT&T, BCS Global, Bharti Airtel, Dialogic, Orange Business Services, Polycom, Verizon, and several other companies. The members will collaborate to develop and implement a Technical Specification Document that answers the need for interconnection, addressing, signaling, interoperability, and service coordination. Users will eventually be able to leverage their video conferencing investments to improve their business' speed and efficiency.

"The OVCC is bringing together the carriers and service providers to give them the needed tools and blueprint to federate and make video ubiquitous, in order to let users have the same video experience regardless of what carrier they use," says Blair Pleasant, co-founder and UC Expert at UCStrategies. "This is a great goal, and I hope they're successful. It's too early to make any judgments, as success will depend on the carriers that adopt and implement the standards and policies decided on by the consortium. There needs to be a critical mass of carriers supporting the consortium's policies, procedures, standards, and connectivity agreements in order for it to succeed. What the OVCC is trying to do is critical for the industry, and hopefully it will lead to great interoperability regardless of network or vendor."

For more information, go to www.ovcc.net.