Speek Now Part of Jive Communications

The increased availability of wireless broadband and smart mobile technology means video conferencing is no longer relegated to on-premises deployments. This has opened a lot of opportunities for organizations of all sizes, but especially for SMBs that couldn’t afford traditional conferencing solutions. Conferencing has now become a standard communication option that can be deployed by almost anyone. As the market place for this type of service continues to grow, communications companies are acquiring assets that can increase their presence in this segment. Jive Communications, provider of enterprise unified communications (UC) and hosted PBX, announced it has purchased Speek, an audio and Web conferencing vendor, as part of its growth strategy in cloud and IP communications.

Jive did not disclose the terms of the purchase, but it said it is looking forward to integrating the Speek technology with its existing cloud architecture to give enterprises innovative conferencing options.

The Speek platform is a free, visual conference calling technology designed to introduce a simplified format that anyone can use with their browser. In just a couple of steps, you can create an account and initiate a conference call. After signing up for an account you can choose a custom username that is also the unique URL used to identify you.

This URL is basically like a phone number, and when it is time to start the conference call, the people that have your information click the link.  The Web page can be used to share files and add more participants through phone, email or SMS with a click of a button. When the call is finished, you get an email with detailed information, including any data that was shared during the session.

"Our team has worked extremely hard over the last three years to build a best-of-breed meeting service,” said Speek CEO, John Bracken. “We are excited to join forces with Jive Communications and integrate with Jive’s innovative hosted voice and video solutions."

Using the Web for conferencing is becoming the norm as Skype has proven the viability of the technology. With more than 300 million Skype users regularly using video to communicate, the need to have propriety technology is quickly becoming obsolete. This is further being driven by WebRTC and HTML5, two applications that take advantage of Web enabled devices to simplify the way we communicate.

Edited by Maurice Nagle