Video Telephony Isn't Just for Humans!

Ok, it's Thanksgiving for most of you, and I think you'll enjoy this whether or not you're eating turkey still. My colleague Alan Duric sent this my way and just had to share it. He's the CTO of Telio, a service provider I've posted about before.

I'll steer you to a one minute video clip that shows you why video telephony isn't just for humans. No, this isn't Stupid Pet Tricks - the video speaks for itself. As you'll see, the dog - Yoshi - is watching the video phone where his master is communicating with him, and he's responding as if she was there in the room. Sure, it's kind of goofy, but the possibilities for video telephony are endless, and this is another great example you might not have thought of yet.

And of course, it goes without saying that this clip is a great showcase for Telio - both for their service and one of their new video phones. Nice work!

BroadSoft Launches Hosted Video with Tandberg

Can't help but notice there's a trend happening here. Last week I was briefed on this news before it came out, but wasn't able to blog about it until today. Nothing earth-shattering here, but definitely a continuation of a theme that I'm happy to see unfolding. On Friday, BroadSoft announced a partner solution with Tandberg for a hosted video communications offering for the SMB market. BroadSoft provides the hosted services platform via BroadWorks, and Tandberg provides the endpoint in the form of the E20 video phone.

It's a good way for both companies to extend market reach. Tandberg has a full line of video, ranging from the E20 desk phone to the immersive MXP telepresence and HD solutions. They also have Movi, a PC-based video application, but that's not tied in with the BroadSoft news (but it's coming). The hosted service allows Tandberg to ride a more complete offering to market, and opens the door for businesses to scale up from desktop video to the larger systems. They're fighting Polycom every step of the way, and they need partnerships like this to get beyond being just a hardware or endpoint solution.

BroadSoft gets more market traction by adding another top tier video partner to their stable. They already partner with LifeSize and Polycom, and last week had a nice announcement with the latter for their VVX1500 media phone.

Taking this back a step or two, the BroadSoft/Tandberg news comes on the heels of Vidtel's announcement last week about their entry into the SMB video telephony market - which BroadSoft had a hand in. And going back a bit further, desktop video pioneer SightSpeed was acquired by Logitech in November.

Sure looks like a trend to me, and I have no doubt we'll be hearing more news on the video telephony front from both startups and majors in due time. Overall, the timing definitely seems right - video technology is good enough now, bandwidth is affordable, people are more accepting of video, and we now have affordable, practical solutions.

No doubt video can be a great proxy for traveling to meetings, and SMBs will be very receptive to saving money. The only hitch is that you need to spend some money to save this money. The Tandberg phones won't be cheap, so the VARs and service providers pitching hosted video will have to be creative. This is a very cost-conscious market, and I'd have to say that the marketing angle will be every bit as important as the technology story. I think that's largely true for most IP communications offerings, but particularly here where you need the hardware to make it work.

Vidtel Pushes into SMB with Polycom

Been trying hard to get this post up before the day is out. It's been an intense week on a few fronts, and it's been a good week for Vidtel. This is Scott Wharton's startup, and he's put together a solid team and a great offering since launching in early December.

You can read up the background in that post, but the story today is a nice progression. Vidtel came to market with a Grandstream video phone, selling a video telephony service to consumers. It's a huge opportunity, but you have to win business one household at a time, and that will take a while for an unknown startup. No matter. Scott has a plan, and with a solid offering, I'm confident he will make this work.

The SMB market is another frontier altogether, and to tackle that, they need an upgraded handset and partners with an installed base of customers and/or channels. Well, they have that now with Polycom, and together, this should be a winner.

Earlier this week, Polycom announced the launch of their VVX 1500 media phone, which features HD voice, video telephony, and open APIs to support third party and SIP applications. It's another step along the path of how telephones and PCs are morphing into appliances that support IP and Web-based applications.

Vidtel enters the picture with a follow-on announcement about how they are now the world's first provider of an SMB services offering built around the VVX 1500.

Now we're getting somewhere, folks. To me, this is big news - it's probably the coolest, sexiest SMB offering out there, and once people wake up to what's on offer, they should be running to get this service. Speaking with Scott today - on Vidtel of course - I can see how excited he is about the news. It's truly an industry first, and Vidtel has come a long way in a very short time.

Actually, Scott noted that my call with him was probably the world's first real-world session using the VVX 1500 over Vidtel's network. Well, that makes two of us who were excited to be talking about this today - cool! So, for what it's worth, maybe I have the scoop for a change, and I can tell you that the call quality was great. The video image was crisp, the colors were bright, and the session ran pretty much in real-time. No noticeable jitter or image degradation - it was a solid experience. That may be the most important takeaway from this post - it works, folks - and I'm sure the market will love it once they try it out.

When I presented about SIP Trunking last month at the IT Expo, this is exactly the type of offering everyone is looking for to leverage the power of end-to-end IP. HD voice is a big part of the story, and you'll know what I mean if you've experienced it. Combine this with high quality video, and the VVX 1500 becomes a powerful communications hub, and will be a great driver for videoconferencing, something I've been bullish on for a while. For more background on HD voice, I'll steer you to an interview I did recently with Polycom's Jeff Rodman, who is regarded as the "father of HD voice".

To sum up, it's been a big week for Vidtel, and a good one for both Polycom and BroadSoft. Scott had a long tenure at BroadSoft prior to Vidtel, and their BroadWorks platform is a key component to enable and support the applications that make the VVX 1500 such a powerful communications device. Lots of familiarity here, and in this case, I think that's a big reason why all these pieces fit together so nicely.