Virtual Office Resource

Vidyo, Inc., a company specializing in personal telepresence technologies, has launched a new VidyoVoice service that is said to connect any land-line telephone or mobile phone with a video conference, allowing “voice only” users to join a video conference without adding any equipment.

Vidyo’s (News - Alert) videoconferencing solution is said to deliver high definition (HD) multi-point performance over the Internet from standard Macs and PCs, utilizing software-enabled ports on its VidyoRouter.

The company said that the service will be available through Vidyo channel partners in 39 countries.

“We want to make sure that Vidyo conferences become the default way to communicate, and without having voice access this is hard to achieve,” Ofer Shapiro (News - Alert), chief executive officer and co-founder of Vidyo said.

 “To date, voice and video integration on smaller installations have been cumbersome, expensive and not intuitive. VidyoVoice makes it all easy – no reservations and no facility-based equipment required. The system just sends out a simple email that includes options to join the conference either online, via a video link or by phone, via a specified number to call,” Shapiro added.

The product announcement comes as Cisco (News - Alert) released a global study today that shows 77 percent of IT decision makers plan on increasing their spending on collaboration tools this year.

Vidyo  believes customers can achieve universal multi-line voice access to Vidyo conferences without the expense or hassle of hardware-based, on-premise solutions. The service will be initiated by providing a dedicated local or toll-free phone number that each customer gives its employees to access the meeting by phone. Once greeted by the auto-attendant, the user can then input the number of the Vidyo conference.

Moreover, Vidyo unveiled its plan to make the service available from April 15, 2010 via its channel partners.  An annual subscription fee of $600 will include 750 minutes per month and up to 10 people can call in via a single number, eliminating the need to book a parallel audio conference. 

Vidyo is also planning to offer additional subscription plans to provide voice access for larger conferences, where users can pay just $25 per additional 1000 minutes usable anytime during the subscription period.

Vidyo also revealed its plan to showcase its new VidyoVoice and the entire product line of VidyoConferencing solutions at VoiceCon in Orlando.