VidyoPanorama A New Multi-screen Telepresence Environment From Vidyo!

VidyoPanorama http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Vidyo Inc, Telepresence, video communication and collaboration provider, announced today, a new multi-screen telepresence environment called VidyoPanorama.  VidyoPanorama supports up to 20 screens each running a simultaneous high definition, 1080P at 60fps, video session or displaying data collaboration elements. The VidyoPanorama provides a solution to a prominent problem in traditional telepresence collaboration sessions that need to send many participants "off-screen" when the presence is not primary, like they have just spoken or have been made sticky by an operator running the meeting to always be present.  In the VidyoPanorama model all participants and/or multiple data sources can remain visible on the screen at all times.
The VidyoPanorama is able to bring participents together in 1080p 60fps multi-screen telepresence rooms, video conferencing rooms, desktops, iOS and Android-based smart phones and tablets, (including the iPhone, iPad 2, Xoom, Galaxy, Nexus S and others). Vidyo presented a multi-point Video conferencing systen at CES this year employing Vidyo's unique Vidyo Router.

Vidyo Press Release;

Hackensack, NJ - June 8, 2011 -- Vidyo, Inc. today announced VidyoPanorama, a groundbreaking personal telepresence solution that delivers the industry's first affordable 1080p at 60fps solution supporting up to 20 screens at 10% the cost of current telepresence solutions. Vidyo is the only company that delivers affordable immersive interactions across 1080p 60fps multi-screen telepresence rooms, video conferencing rooms, desktops, iOS and Android-based smart phones and tablets, (including the iPhone, iPad 2, Xoom, Galaxy, Nexus S and others)  enabling employees to use the devices they want to use.

Based on Vidyo's platform for video communication and collaboration, VidyoPanorama redefines the telepresence paradigm to support today's highly distributed and mobile workforce and delivers a more immersive and affordable video experience with superior quality and up to 5x more screen real-estate. VidyoPanorama provides unmatched flexibility and choice to use off-the-shelf hardware, connect with a full-complement of form factors, and create innovative applications not addressed by legacy telepresence solutions.  VidyoPanorama reduces up-front customer investments by 90% and dramatically decreases on-going expenses by working over general data networks and the Internet without costly high QoS networks.

"Traditional telepresence systems promised an 'in-person' experience when optimized in settings with limited participants and unlimited budgets. In reality they have failed to deliver immersive multi-point experiences in large group meetings when people 'disappear' each time the number of remote cameras exceeds the number of screens.  Someone coughs and you are no longer a participant on the screen,"  said Ofer Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of Vidyo. "VidyoPanorama  breaks the choke-hold by being the first to deliver the screen real estate required to have full interaction in large group meetings at full 1080p  60fps  with immersive interactions and seamless flexibility to engage  from telepresence rooms, desktops or mobile devices running over every day networks."
 (click here to see a video of VidyoPanorama in action).

VidyoPanorama Product Highlights

VidyoPanorama is highly scalable and supports large geographically dispersed video conferences and participants.  VidyoPanorama enables up to 9 screens delivering 1080p at 60 fps in its first release and, in the future, will enable up to 20 screens delivering 1080p @ 60fps, providing dynamic customization of video layout for both participant and application sharing. The solution consists of a primary control unit for the room, a decoder per screen, an executive tablet, an off-the-shelf high definition camera and audio system. 
VidyoPanorama provides a highly flexible approach to telepresence that is not available from other vendors.  For example, customers can create a telepresence room that is any size or shape using multiple screen configurations, furniture selection, branding, lighting, equipment concealment, power & cooling and ventilation.  VidyoPanorama delivers error resiliency that is 10 times  higher than traditional systems when supporting endpoints connected in multi-point telepresence conferences over general purpose data networks while still delivering an immersive video experience. VidyoPanorama is highly bandwidth efficient and is able to deliver High Definition video starting at 500 Kbps  per screen.
VidyoPanorama creates new usage scenarios for telepresence by allowing channel partners to use Vidyo's robust APIs and SDK to create new solutions such as:

    * Operations management center for manufacturing or supply chain management

    * Command center for disaster recovery efforts or military applications

    * Patient monitoring in a doctor's or nurse's station at a hospital

    * Distance learning with multiple experts delivering rich contextual immersive communications

    * Financial services applications to coordinate across geographies in real time


VidyoPanorama Pricing and Availability

Select pricing for popular industry configurations of VidyoPanorama include:
  

    * 4 Screen 720p60 for under $40,000

    * 4 Screen 1080p60 for under $44,000

    * 6 Screen- 720p60 for under $45,000

    * 6 Screen- 1080p60 for under $50,000

    * 9 Screen- 720p60 for under $55,000

    * 9 Screen- 1080p60 for under $60,000


VidyoPanorama offers unmatched affordability at an average price of around $6,000 per screen for a 9 screen system and $4,500 per screen for a 20 screen system.
Both the 720p60 and the 1080p60 solutions will be in Beta trials with customers and partners in August 2011 and will be generally available in Q4 2011.  The full range of Vidyo's personal telepresence portfolio, including VidyoPanorama, will be demonstrated at the upcoming InfoComm conference in Orlando, Florida, Booth #1375, June 11-17, 2011.cds

The Vidyo Difference
VidyoTechnology offers unprecedented error resiliency, low latency and rate matching to enable natural, high quality video to work over the Internet, LTE, 3G and 4G networks. Because Vidyo's solution is software-based, it can be easily expanded, upgraded, and customized for individual Enterprise and vertical market video conferencing needs. Vidyo's product line spans a full range of potential
requirements, from VidyoMobile supporting tablets and smart phones to VidyoDesktop with personal telepresence capabilities on a PC or a Mac to the VidyoRoom that encodes and decodes HD-quality video at up to 60 frames per second.

About Vidyo, Inc.
Vidyo, Inc. pioneered Personal Telepresence enabling natural, HD multi-point videoconferences on desktop computers and room systems, and VidyoCast, an affordable cloud-based broadcast solution. Vidyo's patented VidyoRouter architecture eliminates an MCU while delivering the industry's best error resilience and lowest latency videoconferencing and broadcast solutions over the Internet. Vidyo's solution utilizes H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and the company has been active in various standards bodies driving H.264 SVC and SIP interoperability since 2005.  Learn more at www.vidyo.com, on the Blog or follow @vidyo on Twitter.
# # #

The VIDYO logo is a registered trademark of Vidyo, Inc., VIDYO and the trademarks of the VIDYO family of products are trademarks of Vidyo, Inc. and the other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Vidyo Contact:
Mari Mineta Clapp                              
press@vidyo.com              
+1 (408) 398-6433

Press release

Verizon Business Enhances Unified Communications And Collaboration With New IP Capabilities.

 Verizon unified communications and collaboration http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Verizon Business this week introduced new IP capabilities to make the adoption of unified communications and collaboration simpler and more cost-effective than ever before for Verizon Business customers. Business users will be able to make the Most of Voice Over IP, IP Conferencing with the new services.

• IP Audio Conferencing for conducting instant meetings that will speed collaboration while eliminating additional per minute charges for calls originating from a Verizon IP-enabled location leveraging the company’s expansive global IP network.
• VoIP IP Enterprise Routing (VIPER) – a new cloud-based VoIP feature that enables more cost-effective business-to-business voice calls by eliminating domestic or international per-minute calling charges when calls are made between Verizon VoIP customers in either the U.S. and Europe that sign up for the VIPER feature. As an added benefit, a customer using Verizon IP Audio Conferencing will not incur additional per minute charges from any VIPER-enabled location dialing into the host conference bridge.
• Centralized multi-site designs for Verizon Hosted IP Centrex customers in Europe to aggregate calls through a central “hub” location connected to Verizon’s expansive global IP network, including calls from sites in other countries and/or using third-party wide area network access. Multi-site customers also benefit from a new pricing structure between countries where Verizon offers VoIP.

Listen to an audio podcast on The Five Things Enterprises Should Know about IP Trunking. 
Read More on Verizon press release

Collaborative Predictions From Cisco's CTO

Enterprise Collaboration
"Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises what Social Networks are to Consumers" is the first of the five predictions that Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco will be making in a series of predictions that she has promised to provide us, about collaboration and the enterprise.
Looking at the the first prediction, I am sure the rest is going to be very interesting and promising. In this prediction she ellaborates the current state of social networks like Facebook, linkedin and of course Twitter and how these collaborative effects will filter down to business world. I have witnessed collaboration savings that could be achieved using the right tools and technology.
I particularly like the example she she put forward involving Mac users at Cisco and about a birth of a support wiki. You know this is a real business case when she ends the statement with; "this wiki has delivered an estimated $2.6M in value annually for Cisco."
"As collaboration networks evolve and proliferate, our challenge as an industry is clear. We need to develop Enterprise Collaboration Platforms that provide the same ease of use, speed and ubiquity that social networks offer in the consumer world. But we need to combine those qualities with the high level of security, availability, quality of service, and reliability that enterprises require."
Follow the link below for a very informative article.

5 Predictions for the Future of Collaboration

Tags: Collaboration, Collaboration Networks, Social Networks, cisco, Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, Enterprise Collaboration Platforms

GIPS To Bring Real Time Video Demos To VoiceCon Orlando Florida

Global IP Solutions
GIPS, Global IP Solutions and the maker of voice engine that we have spoken about before (GIPS) will be demonstrating desktop video conferencing, and showing end users how HD (high definition) desktop video conferencing can make a difference to end users’ overall Unified communications and video conferencing experience.
The technology is based on GIPS voice and video engines handles all aspects of audio mixing and processing in a conferencing or collaboration environment. Audio and video processing issues typical on IP networks, such as delay, jitter, packet loss, lip synchronization, background noise, echo, CPU and bandwidth constraints are easily managed by the technology.
VoiceCON will be held March 30-April 2 at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, Fla.
GIPS News

Tags: VoiceCON, GIPS, Voice Engine, Video Engine, Global IP Solutions, Unified communications, video conferencing, collaboration

Telepresence Is Not Only For Elite

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Telepresence has been looked at a product for high level executives and managers but I know many people who uses Cisco Telepresence that does not fall into that category. For some of us it is a productivity tool that we use day to day. But due to nature of compny policy, I cannot disclose the details. At the same time I am sure there are many others who use the product and could comment.
Cisco is looking for your input in this arena and David Hsieh, vice president of marketing, emerging technologies, Cisco. posted the following on Cisco Collaboration blog;

"If you are a Cisco TelePresence user and you’re not an executive, we’d like to know how you use TelePresence in your job. Leave a comment and if we can follow up with you, include your email.

If you have an idea about how we could make Cisco TelePresence even more accessible to anyone, anywhere, leave a comment and if we can follow up with you, include your email."

Time to present your ideas!

Tags: Cisco TelePresence system, Collaboration, emerging technologies, Cisco

IBM Builds Communities In the Cloud To Promote Smarter Workforce.

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
IBM which was side lined for a while in the social, communication and the general what is hot computing arena came out waving victory flags today. The new flagship product in the cloud, Lotuslive brings together most business related online users by integrating, it's own Lotus Online with Linkedin, SalesForce.com and Skype. This is taking a front seat at cloud applications like Google Apps (which we use) and Microsoft Office Live, under the moniker, LotusLive. Given that the clouds are nothing new to IBM, I think they will move ahead, faster in the business face of it. If they are to present the product in an attractive manner, say free Lotuslive Lite, there might be other users like, SMBs who wants to take a taste of the lotussphere.
Another feather in the cap is the effort to work closely with Blackberry to provide business services through mobile Web. See another post on Skype and IBM Collaboration.
Following is the press release by IBM.

ORLANDO, FL - 19 Jan 2009: LOTUSPHERE -- At the annual Lotusphere Conference, IBM (NYSE:IBM) unveiled plans to help businesses build a smarter workforce by providing software services to help people work together across the enterprise, on the move and via the cloud.

IBM today announced IBM LotusLive (www.lotuslive.com), a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business. LotusLive.com will serve as a single destination for all IBM Lotus online collaboration tools, including social networking, e-mail, file sharing and Web conferencing. LotusLive will help businesses of all sizes simplify and improve the way they interact with their customers, partners and suppliers.

LinkedIn, an online network of more than 34 million business professionals, today announced a partnership with IBM Lotus to integrate LinkedIn's functionality and networking capabilities with IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Connections and LotusLive.

With the planned Lotus Notes integration, LinkedIn members will be able to keep track of their professional network via a Network Updates feed. Users will also have seamless access to LinkedIn profiles from within their Lotus mail and applications.

IBM intends to combine the best of business and professional social networking sites allowing people to expose LinkedIn information from the millions of LinkedIn public profiles directly into Lotus Connections.

The planned LotusLive integration will connect the LinkedIn network with LotusLive. LotusLive users will be able to search LinkedIn's public professional network and then instantly collaborate with members using the LotusLive services.

Salesforce.com plans to integrate LotusLive services with its CRM applications, helping simplify and improve customer interactions. Businesses will be able to extend the customer and opportunity management work done in the Salesforce CRM applications with the Web conferencing and task management capabilities of LotusLive.

In addition, Skype has announced plans to integrate its voice and video service with LotusLive collaborative services to create a seamless communications experience. This level of integration can allow LotusLive customers to have the convenience of being able to call Skype contacts from within their LotusLive contacts.

Making New Connections with Micro-Blogs and Wikis
The latest version of Lotus Connections takes popular features from consumer social networking sites and puts them to work for business. A new personal "posting wall" and micro-blogging capabilities will make it easy for people to quickly share short, yet critical pieces of information. Based on customer demand, IBM plans to add a new wiki service to Lotus Connections. Wikis are Web pages that quickly and easily allow people to create and modify content in real-time.

Lotus Connections is being used by industry leaders worldwide. McKesson, the world's largest healthcare services company, chose Lotus Connections for enterprise social networking to improve workforce efficiency and attract and retain top talent who expect advanced collaboration tools. McKesson also sought to be among the first pioneers in the healthcare industry to adopt social networking and benefit from the open extensibility of Lotus Connections, allowing integration with Microsoft SharePoint and Vignette Portal.

"We're excited to broaden our collaboration tools to help encourage information sharing and idea generation across our diverse workforce," said Anand Srinivasan, development manager at McKesson. "With hundreds of facilities across the country, our use of Lotus Connections technology will enable us to more effectively tap into our collective intelligence to continue helping our customers improve health care."

Mobilizing the Worker with Lotus on the BlackBerry®
Another major pillar of a smart workforce is equipping individuals with the power of the mobile Web to innovate and collaborate efficiently anywhere, at anytime. IBM's Institute for Business Value predicts one billion mobile Web users by 2011 and a significant shift in the way the majority of people will interact with the Web over the next decade. Addressing that market opportunity, IBM and Research In Motion (RIM) will bring new advanced social software features to BlackBerry smartphone business users worldwide. The new features will help BlackBerry smartphone users find expertise, form teams, share information and stay in touch in real-time, making them more effective and productive. They will also bring mobile business users far beyond e-mail to live expertise and collective intelligence.

Lotusphere attendees will get a sneak preview and see demonstrations of new capabilities for BlackBerry smartphones which will be available later this year. They include access to open document format-based IBM Lotus Symphony documents, presentations and spreadsheets; IBM Lotus Quickr Web 2.0-based team software to help individuals find, access, share and work with business content such as documents, photos and videos; enhanced Lotus Connections functionality for access to activities, blogs and communities, augmenting the access already available to profiles and tags; enhanced Lotus Sametime capabilities; and new tools for developers.

SAP and Lotus Notes Make Core Data Easy to Use
IBM and SAP announced the planned March release of their first joint software product, called Alloy™. IBM and SAP showcased successful early results of this product with several customers, including Colgate-Palmolive and Arla Foods.

Alloy by IBM and SAP connects IBM Lotus Notes software with SAP Business Suite. Providing workers with access to critical business information in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, it will enable timely, more informed business decisions. Employees can benefit from increased business analysis, information in context and the power to run their business operations directly from their Lotus Notes desktops.

For more information, including product and service availability, visit www.ibm.com/software/lotus.

Tags: Collaboration, VoIP business, IBM, LotusSphere, lotuslive, salesforce.com, skype, social networking, LinkedIn, Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live, Lotus Connections, Lotuslive Lite, Blackberry, mobile web

Novell's Opern Source Wepons In Collaboration Arena Aims At Microsoft SharePoint.

Last time I dealt with collaboration with Novell was a years ago with Groupwise. But recently Novell acquired the ICEcore project as part of the SiteScape. Since then Novell renamed the IceCore Project to be Kablink, sighting that name, IceCore did not cut with the enterprise computing. The ICEcore project / Kablink is open source, it is the basis for Novell's Teaming + Conferencing commercial solution. Novell takes the Kablink development tree and adds some additional enterprise features such as backup and recovery.

Novell Teaming brings together people and the content they need to do their jobs. Users create workspaces and invite other members to participate—both from within or outside organizational boundaries. Virtual teams can easily and securely manage, share, locate and access documents, calendars, discussion forums, wikis and blogs. Novell Teaming also includes powerful, built-in workflow functions to help team members track the status and progress of documents. Team workspaces also enable enterprise social networking and the creation of effective teams, with members chosen not by proximity, but because they possess the required content expertise and skills for the project.

There are more features in the real-time collaboration solution make users aware of the online availability of team members and give users the ability to instant message (IM) with team members–either individually or as a group–or participate in live voice conferences or Web conferences. The Web conferencing components let users share desktops, show slide presentations and participate in whiteboarding sessions. With these solutions, teams communicate more effectively and become more productive irrespective of their platform of their choice (Linux and Windows).

The Novell's Teaming + Conferencing commercial solution place itself in the Microsoft's Sharepoint Space and from the comparisons provided on the Novell site shows the differences.

Novell Teaming + Conferencing includes:

• Document management and sharing
• Team calendars and shared task lists
• Discussion threads, wikis, blogs, and RSS feeds
• Workflow
• Content and knowledge management with quick search
• Web and voice conferencing
• Instant messaging/chat
• Application sharing and whiteboarding
• Integrated presence awareness

Tags: Conference Solutions, Collaboration, ICEcore, SiteScape, Kablink, Teaming + Conferencing, voice conference, Web conference