Video Collaboration company, LifeSize, Deepak Braganza, Country Manager – LifeSize India and South Asia, highlights the changes in the video conferencing business, the new areas where it is getting deployed and what the next generation VC will look like. He also elaborates on the company’s channel strategy in an exclusive interaction with Channel Times…
– By Sandhya Malhotra
CT: In the video collaboration domain, which are the brands and products offered by the company?
Deepak: After years of culmination of innovation, the LifeSize Icon series delivers the smart video. The LifeSize Icon Series is tightly integrated with the LifeSize UVC Platform and its applications – including streaming and recording, firewall traversal, multiparty video calling and management – to make it easier for users to experience the full power of their platform. It facilitates video quality upto HD 1080p60 providing ultimate clarity and fluid motion.
Apart from this, ClearSea is the other product offered by Lifesize, which is fully interoperable and virtualized and is most inclusive solution for desktop and mobile video collaboration, with support for the highest number of devices in the market.
CT: What are the future plans or roadmap of the company for this year?
Deepak:: The video conferencing market is expanding across sectors making businesses more interoperable and mobile. It is now an integral part of the communication strategy of most enterprises, especially educational institutions owing to its cost effectiveness and ubiquity in collaborating and sharing information.
The government – both at the centre and state – is turning out to be the biggest spender in creating high definition video conferencing facilities in various departments. This is being done to enable human interaction over any distance to avoid cost on travel.
For instance, departments such as jails, courts and schools are switching over to video conferencing facilities. This is in addition to connecting district and State headquarters. The next biggest spender is the healthcare sector followed by education.
Lifesize video conferencing can be done through mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), video desktop software for PCs/Macs, room and conference HD video endpoints and solutions, cameras and accessories.
CT: Where traditional video conferencing has failed, newer software-based architectures and technologies will open the gates of adoption. Please elaborate.
Deepak: With the continuous evolution of the technology industry, the ways to interact and communicate have seen a major modification. There has been a gradual but very evident transition from traditional VC to the Smart Video era that has resulted due to the ever developing innovative software based solutions for a seamless and efficient VC.
Video conferencing has crossed the traditional boardroom boundaries and is altering to mobile based video conferencing through a concept called BYOD therefore providing the flexibility to employees. Understanding the communication needs of businesses today, LifeSize with LifeSize UVC ClearSea, the newly designed mobile and desktop video conferencing solution is aiming to simplify the video collaboration experience and offers the comprehensive support of smartphones, tablets and desktops. The solution ensures supreme simplicity and powerful collaboration capabilities for mobile and desktop video calling by enabling the users to choose any kind of device like Mac, PC or more than 50 iOS and Android devices with optimized clients.
CT: Although video conferencing has tremendous business benefits, the market has been hampered by high priced solutions and performance issues. Please comment
Deepak:: For organizations, it can be a little tough to bear the heat of the initial cost of traditional conferencing but with Smart Video coming into existence the companies have the freedom to purchase to satisfy the current needs and expand with the business growth.
LifeSize offers the facility of scalable video conferencing with its UVC ClearSea solution. With the solutions like UVC ClearSea, organizations can experience mobile video collaboration on nearly any device with virtually no start-up cost. UVC ClearSea is part of the LifeSize UVC Platform and offered as hardware or as virtualized software which will enable the firms to scale their video conferencing deployments as the company grows and changes. Organization can choose how they want to deploy video infrastructure as well as how much capacity is needed which wasn’t possible few years back with traditional VC system.
Tell us about your new offering in the communication space
Deepak: With technology touching realm, businesses have seen a major alteration in communication ways. It is important for providers like to us to come up with the most innovative VC solution for the forward thinking players for better competence. LifeSize aims to bring the cut edge technology in VC industry and is focusing on Smart VideoTM conferencing to enable video streaming on android phones and tablets as a result making it easier and less complicated for the organizations and individuals. To solve the ever-changing demands of an evolving marketplace, LifeSize always has an objective to bring up the revolutionized solutions and products like LifeSize Icon Series, the newly designed, highest quality video system and LifeSize UVC ClearSea .
CT: Elaborate on your existing distribution model in place for your solutions to grow your business.
Deepak: We have partnered with some renowned distributors namely Redington and Ingram Micro to distribute LifeSize’s High Definition (HD) video collaboration products and solutions through its distribution network across the region. To differentiate our business and drive expansion and profitability for the company we have strategically partnered with these resellers.
CT: What are the technological enhancement do you see in Video conferencing space?
Deepak: As individuals deeply immersed in video conferencing technology, we at LifeSize keep a close watch on what’s ahead, sorting through a host of promising technologies that will simplify our lives and improve the way we communicate. Moving toward a simpler way to live and work, we have been focused on a number of key initiatives that help businesses do more with fewer resources. Our leadership in virtualization and mobility has set the tone for the year ahead, but there is still much that has yet to unfold. The video conferencing market is expanding across sectors making businesses more interoperable and mobile. It is now an integral part of the communication strategy of most enterprises, especially educational institutions owing to its cost effectiveness and ubiquity in collaborating and sharing information.