In the spirit of back-to-school as summer winds down, I thought this would be a timely topic to share here. Aside from gearing up our kids to get back into learning mode, we as UC practitioners could stand to do some learning from them.
I recently tested the Tely Labs HD Pro small room video system. For those of you who are not aware, Tely Labs is a newer entrant into the enterprise video market and is focused on a camera system that enables small conference rooms. The Tely Labs HD Pro is a relatively small complete video solution that plugs into a monitor/TV using HDMI. It is designed to deliver HD up to 720P (1280x720) for SIP and Skype and 704x586 for H.263. It has a relatively small camera that does not pan or tile, and includes a cover for privacy.
The success Microsoft Lync has had in the Unified Communications market is impressive - both as an enterprise Unified Communication choice and more recently as a full PBX replacement option (Microsoft's Lync surging as PBX choice in North America - Network World).
Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft's new head of Lync and Skype, came up with yet another label for where business communications technology is heading, i.e., "Universal Communications." It doesn't seem to be much of an improvement over what we at UC Strategies have been calling "unified communications" (UC). So, I decided to see where the problem really is, and I think it is because of the term "communications."
Much to my surprise one of the big topics at the Lync Conference last month and at Enterprise Connect last week was the idea of supporting UC users, particularly real time voice and video users, over wireless LANs. Back in 2008, I published my first (and only) book titled Voice over WLANs- The Complete Guide, so 6 years later, the topic is finally coming into vogue.
As the workforce goes mobile, so does videoconferencing. With it comes the need for quality cameras that can also conform to wherever the participant may be, whether they're sitting at a home office or in a conference room. Logitech's latest videoconferencing solution, the ConferenceCam CC3000e, is designed to meet that need, providing the flexibility to set up a conference from any room with professional-quality video and sound. Logitech's goal is to bring video conferencing to the 95 percent of conference rooms that currently lack video collaboration capabilities.
I was chatting recently with a product manager for one of the larger UC vendors and he mentioned that one of his dev teams is working on trying to integrate their backend server with a competitor's desktop client (in effect, allowing their own desktop client to talk to their competitor's desktop client). I was astonished by this as it is so yesterday in thinking about how people collaborate now.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the WebRTC industry's most important event at the moment - the WebRTC Conference and Expo III in Santa Clara, CA. I have a long form post summarizing my takeways from that event.
An updated cloud-based enterprise collaboration suite was released by Bitrix24 on Wednesday, and this is set to compete with Microsoft's Yammer, Skype and Office Suite, according to the company. Enterprise customers are expected to find the mobile CRM app appealing.
UC vendors by necessity will update their products over time. Usually the journey is straightforward, as in adding new features and functionality or enhancing performance or security. Occasionally the changes are not straightforward and consumers, enterprises, partners, and competitors are left scratching their heads over what the vendor is trying to accomplish. Vendors argue that these puzzling changes they make reflect business or technical decisions that they expect to pay off in the long-run at some measured short-term disadvantage or loss of momentum.