LogMeIn Identified as Disruptor

Frost & Sullivan named LogMeIn’s join.me collaboration tool a global web conferencing market disruptor. The research firm said “join.me has been successful at targeting SMBs as well as enterprise users that are looking for easy to use and affordable cloud collaboration, and has built a solid brand presence in the web.” Companies are increasingly looking for SaaS solutions like join.me because they are easy to install, use, and license, according to Frost & Sullivan.

Video Quality Mushrooms

Mushroom Networks (News - Alert) Inc.’s new Video Armor solution was designed to significantly enhance the quality and reliability of videoconferencing. It does that by creating a

bonded IP tunnel with self-healing and was designed specifically for video transmission.

Camera Goes Wide

Toshiba Surveillance IP Video Products has come out with an Ultra HD IP video surveillance camera called the IKS-WB9518. It can capture 4K video in 3840 x 2160 resolution at a rate of 25 frames per second. Its deployment can reduce the number of conventional HD cameras needed by nearly 50 percent due to its ability to cover very wide spaces, such as retail parking lots, says Toshiba. "Adding four times the pixels into a video frame empowers security professionals to cover large areas as well as to zoom into the picture for amazing details without sacrificing quality, even at great distances," said Greg Hartzell, director of Toshiba Surveillance IP Video Products. "The IKS-WB9518 also captures better facial recognition scans, and provides for improved content analysis in people counting or vehicle plate recognition."

NCR Embeds Vidyo

NCR has a new global OEM agreement to bring Vidyo’s video communication technology to customers of its own Interactive Teller and other video solutions, by integrating the Vidyo technology into its products. “NCR is the market leader in omni-channel banking experiences. We pioneered the interactive banking technology market and our customers want a secure and dynamic experience,” said Jed Taylor, vice president and general manager of community bank software & global video services at NCR. “Vidyo delivers unmatched video quality and security and is our preferred partner to video-enable our NCR Interactive Teller and our future omni-channel video offerings.”

Skype for TV Tunes Out

Microsoft (News - Alert) will no longer support the Skype for TV application starting in June 2016, Broadband TV News reports. Smart TV manufacturers, the company said, can elect whether to keep or remove the app from their devices, the article said. Samsung (News - Alert) is removing the app from its smart TVs starting in June.

Tely 200 Gets Touch

Tely Touch is the new touch interface for the Tely 200 video endpoint. It allows users of the endpoint to initiate video collaboration with one touch dialing from the integrated calendar; get instant access to virtual meeting rooms via a directory; easily share content, adjust camera views, change layouts, and more; and use the tablet camera to display an in-room whiteboard or objects such as product prototypes, needed for collaboration.

IDC (News - Alert) Assesses Videoconferencing

Total worldwide enterprise video equipment market revenue in the fourth quarter of last year was $627.5 million, up from $612 million in same quarter the previous year, according to industry analyst firm IDC. The number of videoconferencing units sold in the fourth quarter increased 16.3 percent quarter over quarter, but was flat year over year. "Some good news for the worldwide enterprise videoconferencing equipment market. It enjoyed positive growth in both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year revenue numbers in the fourth quarter of 2015. In addition, revenue was slightly positive for 2015, stemming the tide of three consecutive years of annual revenue declines," said Rich Costello, senior analyst for enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC.

Polycom (News - Alert) Intros out RealPresence Centro

The RealPresence Centro conferencing solution from Polycom is now available in a limited set of markets around the world. The RPC consists of four screens attached to a support that when viewed from above would form the four sides of a square – a much different arrangement than what is found in most conferencing setups. The support is attached to a base unit that houses the heart and brains of the RPC. A camera comes out from the top of the support, and provides 360-degree video footage of everyone in the room to remote attendees. It has native interoperability with the Lync/Skype for Business platform.

Huawei Expands Video Offerings

Huawei in April officially released its Video-as-a-Service solution at TV Connect 2016 in London. It was designed to help carriers quickly build and launch video services, reduce investment risk, and shorten time to market. It leverages Huawei's global content and application aggregation platform. The company also has announced its Video Experience Measurement System U-vMOS solution. That stands for User, Unified, Ubiquitous-Mean Opinion Score for Video. “Using U-vMOS in video communication scenario allows real-time monitoring of degradation in user experience and provides carriers with an end-to-end diagnostic tool for determining and locating video experience issues from end user to access networks, to transmission networks, and to core networks,” Huawei explains.

Vidyo Helps DingTalk Scale

Alibaba’s DingTalk has tapped Vidyo to help it bring embedded HD quality, click-to-connect multiparty video conferencing capabilities to the free, cloud-based enterprise unified communication platform. More than 1.5 million enterprise companies use DingTalk on desktop and mobile today. Vidyo helps this solution scale. “Alibaba DingTalk’s enterprise customers required the highest quality video experience be integrated with DingTalk voice and messaging capabilities, and we selected Vidyo, the market leader and pioneer of Scalable Video Coding, as our video conferencing partner,” said Chen Hang, founder of DingTalk. “We are glad that Vidyo could address Alibaba DingTalk’s requirements for a high quality, extremely scalable, customized integration and a flawless experience over mobile and desktop devices with infrastructure that can grow as our business continues to expand.”