Video conferencing will hit $1bn in 2016

Businesses are increasingly adopting enterprise-grade telepresence. The market will boom, with spending hitting $1.1bn in 2016, growing with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% from 2011 to 2016, finds Ovum.

The explosive growth of the telepresence market means many companies new to the technology will soon be making large purchasing decisions. In a new report, the independent telecoms analysis firm explores the competitive dynamics within that telepresence market.

Source: Ovum.

Microsoft and Polycom join forces with SVC

Microsoft is among the first companies to announce its intention to adopt Polycom's H.264 SVC technology, furthering the recently announced strategic relationship between the two companies to deliver and market integrated Unified Communications (UC) solutions.

"Microsoft and Polycom are committed to support open, interoperable UC solutions," said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Office Business Productivity Marketing Group, Microsoft. "Video collaboration can help improve customer productivity and lower costs. By integrating H.264 SVC technology within our broader solution offering, Microsoft and Polycom can make it easier for millions of people to leverage video communications within familiar Microsoft applications."

Read the press release and watch the video.

Gartner on Cisco ūmi

Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, commented the new Cisco ūmi telepresence system in this blog post, using the following words:

Why would any sane consumer pay $600 plus $30 a month for something which is available for free elsewhere? I can’t imagine how Cisco imagine this product can provide enough value to convince consumers who believe video calls are something that comes for free with Skype. Based on what I know at the moment I’ll be amazed if it succeeds.

 

Cisco ūmi telepresence

Cisco introduces the new ūmi telepresence system, a first-of-its-kind consumer product that connects to an existing HD television and a broadband internet connection to create a clear, natural and lifelike video communications experience.

Once Cisco ūmi is connected to an HD television and a wired or wireless broadband connection, a remote control provides access to an on-screen user interface, through which users can make ūmi calls, access video messages, manage contacts, and customize their profile and settings.

Users can also record their own ūmi videos, which they can share on Facebook, on YouTube, or via email. Users can even keep in touch with people who don't have ūmi by placing and receiving video calls from any computer with a webcam and Google video chat.

The price is $599.

See the press release and the ūmi website.

Scalable Video Coding for Windows 7

«Recent shipments of Windows 7 for business, comprised almost entirely of multi-core systems, showcase Nefsis scalable video conferencing capabilities for business applications. Nefsis delivers high-quality HD video to Windows 7 desktops by expanding video scalability in three ways: across its worldwide server cloud; across multiple processing cores at each participant's personal computer; and through the use of Scalable Video Coding. With this technology advance virtually any business can enjoy high quality video conferencing that was once the exclusive domain of expensive boardroom installations.»

Source: Nefsis News.

SVC implications for videoconference

«Frost & Sullivan believes that SVC is a key milestone in achieving higher quality video at lower network and infrastructure costs, addressing two of the key roadblocks for more pervasive videoconferencing adoption - cost and quality. We believe that even vendors with popular proprietary CODECs will be forced to give SVC its due diligence as it is standards-based and offers undisputable advantages to end users.»

Source: Frost&Sullivan

ITU-T Question 5/16

At the last meeting held in Geneva between July 19 and 30, ITU-T Study Group 16 approved on an urgent basis the Question 5 on Telepresence Systems. The Rapporteur for the new Question is Mr Stephen Botzko (Polycom, USA). The motivation for the new Q.5/16 is as follows.

Telepresence represents an important evolution of the videoconferencing market. This trend is expected to accelerate, as mainstream video applications begin to offer telepresence features. Many products exist today that, although they are based on IETF SIP and ITU-T H.323 protocols, lack interoperability due to proprietary extensions needed to these base protocols to offer a user-rich experience. The increased penetration of broadband communications and higher user awareness of video applications, coupled with financial and environmental gains brought by remote collaboration tools have brought a boost to applications such as telepresence. This makes it important that standardized solutions be developed to ensure multi-vendor interoperability on a global basis.

Skype to any device

The SkypeKit SDK supplies APIs for plugging into Skype's messaging, voice, and video chat service. It also includes an implementation of SILK, the company's audio compression codec. The SDK is currently in closed beta and is only supported on Linux at this stage. Skype intends to extend the SDK to additional platforms next month and will eventually make it more broadly accessible. Skype envisions hardware makers using the SDK to add voice and video chat to devices like televisions.

See also Ars Technica and Engadget.

Radvision selects Freescale for HD Videoconference

Freescale Semiconductor’s high-performance MSC8144 multicore digital signal processor (DSP) has been selected by Radvision for use in its latest high-definition SCOPIA Elite 5000 Unified Communications Video Infrastructure Multiparty Conferencing Unit.

SCOPIA Elite is the industry’s first standards based MCU to natively support advanced H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology. RADVISION’s SVC technology provides a high quality experience over unmanaged networks such as the public Internet, particularly benefitting desktop video conferencing users on the road or teleworkers from their home offices. This approach provides the benefits of high error resiliency while maintaining full interoperability and high quality with conferencing and telepresence systems not currently using SVC.

Tuned for a myriad of wireline and wireless applications, Freescale’s MSC8144 DSP is the workhorse behind SCOPIA Elite high-definition video compression processing, enabling it with high channel density, energy efficiency and form factor advantages. The MSC8144 combines four high-performance 1 GHz DSP cores based on SC3400 StarCore™ technology with 10 MB internal memory and high-speed interconnects such as Serial RapidIO® and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

Sources: Businesswire, Radvision.

Full SVC with interoperability in 2010

Polycom announced that it will deliver the industry's first "Full Scalable Video Coding" (Full SVC) solution in 2010, which will further address reduced bandwidth requirements, error concealment during packet loss, enhanced scalability for multipoint calling and universality - or interoperability across a broad set of video protocols.

According to Polycom, today's limited SVC solutions attempt to address these issues, but lack standards-based signaling, which precludes interoperability with any other SVC-based systems, and, more importantly, lack interoperability with all standards-based telepresence systems, desktop video collaboration applications and legacy video conferencing endpoints.

Polycom intends to deliver the first Full SVC solution that addresses all of these issues and provides unmatched interoperability. With Full SVC deployed across video endpoints and infrastructure, Polycom will extend the benefits of SVC universally, allowing modern video systems from across multiple standards to fully interoperate with SVC systems, legacy systems, H.264 systems, Microsoft RTV systems, etc.

See the full press release.

Videoconference on a Smartphone

During his keynote presentation at CES 2010, focused on the future of computing, Intel's CEO Paul Otellini showed how advances in processor technologies would make it possible to run even the most demanding applications on smaller devices.

To achieve the demonstration, Intel partnered with Vidyo, a provider of high-definition video conferencing software that uses a multipoint architecture based on the Scalable Video Coding extension to the H.264/AVC standard running on the next generation Moorestown implementation of Intel's Atom processors. Moorestown is a system on a chip that incorporates a next-generation 45-nanometer Atom processor.

All CES keynotes videos are available here.

Skype-enabled HDTVs and webcams

Skype announced partnerships with LG and Panasonic to offer Skype-enabled HDTVs, which are expected to be available in mid-2010. Both LG and Panasonic will offer specially-designed HD webcams that are optimized for Skype video calls as separate accessories that can be plugged into the televisions. These webcams support 720p HD at 1 Mb/s symmetrical bandwidth and include special microphones and optics that can pick up sound and video from a couch-distance.

Skype also announced support for video calls on PCs in 720p HD resolution at 30fps, using new Skype Certified HD webcams that can handle the video encoding and processing onboard, removing the need for a high-performance computer to encode the HD video.

Source: I4U News here and here.

Logitech to acquire LifeSize Communications

Logitech International announced that it has agreed to acquire privately held LifeSize Communications of Austin, Texas for $405 million in cash. LifeSize is a global leader in high definition (HD) video communication solutions, with more than 9,000 video conferencing customers across 80 countries in large enterprises, small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and public healthcare, education and government organizations.

Logitech and LifeSize plan to pursue existing and new relationships with unified communications, collaboration and VoIP industry partners and competitors to drive the development of an open eco-system for interoperable video communication.

Read the press release and the comments on NY Times.

Disruptive impact of SVC on videoconference

In the report "H.264 SVC: A Technical Assessment" Wainhouse Research compares SVC (Scalable Video Coding) to the H.264 Baseline Profile used in traditional video-conferencing systems and conclude that SVC videoconferencing systems can:

• Provide the ability to host video calls on lower cost, loss-prone IP networks, including the Internet, with equal or better quality than that of traditional systems

• Support video calls between endpoints with widely varying processor power and network connection
  
  
• Deliver much improved interactivity due to noticeable shorter delays on both point-to-point calls and multipoint calls between H.264 SVC-compliant systems
  
  
• Support an impressive reduction in the cost of multipoint infrastructure hardware

Source: Marketwire.

Cisco to acquire Tandberg

On October 1st, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to launch a recommended voluntary cash offer to acquire TANDBERG. TANDBERG, based in Oslo, Norway, and New York, is a leading provider of telepresence, high-definition videoconferencing and mobile video products and services. TANDBERG's leading video endpoints and network infrastructure solution will be integrated into Cisco's world-class collaboration architecture.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all the outstanding shares of TANDBERG for 153.5 Norwegian Kroner per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.0 billion. The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of 2010.