Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) subsidiary LifeSize this week launched its LifeSize UVC Platform, which the company says is the industry's first integrated and virtualized software solution for HD video conferencing infrastructure.

The UVC (universal visual collaboration) platform integrates the capabilities of multiple single-purpose infrastructure products and makes them instantly available from one interface with one login account.

The company said the UVC platform is scalable and customizable, and includes infrastructure applications like HD streaming and recording, firewall/NAT traversal and Gatekeepers (routing and control).

LifeSize contends that with a single integrated platform and a deployment model to fit every IT environment, administrators can buy what they need now and scale up as the organization's needs grow.

"LifeSize has consistently delivered industry firsts," said Colin Buechler, who was named LifeSize's CEO earlier this month, "We were first to HD, first with one button streaming and recording, and now we are redefining video conferencing infrastructure... LifeSize has fundamentally changed the way businesses deploy infrastructure, unlocking the door to real adoption and growth in the video conferencing industry."

LifeSize is offering a "try before you buy" feature that enables instant downloads of the platform, which is globally available now.

The platform with infrastructure applications lists at $3,999; it currently includes UVC Video Center for streaming and recording; UVC Transit Server, a firewall/NAT traversal server; the UVC Transit Client, which is a firewall/NAT traversal proxy; and UVC Access, a gatekeeper/IP communications routing and control.

For more:
- see this release

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Cablevision (NYSE: CVC)'s Optimum Lightpath, which sells VoIP and other Ethernet-based communication solutions in the New York metropolitan area businesses, is rolling out conferencing services that it says will deliver enterprise-class audio and web conferencing.

The initiative is aimed at the increasingly UC-savvy mid-market business segment and is part of Optimum Lightpath's Collaboration Suite.

The Optimum Lightpath Conference Bundle includes support for up to 300 audio only or 125 Web and audio participants, allows an unlimited ability to add audio conference moderators and includes a "Connect Me" feature that will automatically call participants logging into a meeting via the Web.

The offering also gives users a personal digital library for storing and quickly sharing frequently used files, enables real-time administrative controls and a Web portal to manage the service, and one-click conference recording.

The bundle is is available to existing Optimum Lightpath customers and is based on flat-rate pricing for packages of minutes and licenses. Live tech support is available 24/7.

"Cost savings remains a difficult-to-quantify benefit, therefore IT managers are increasingly looking at bundled services that reduce costs while improving user access," said Irwin Lazar, vice president of Nemertes Research. 

For more:
- see this release

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Vidyo announced it has virtualized the first video conferencing infrastructure and delivered an HD video conference on over 100 concurrent lines. To date, virtualization in the video conferencing market has been limited to call control. Vidyo has now virtualized media processing, enabling service providers to offer unlimited multipoint scalability and low latency rate matching capability on demand to accelerate the adoption of high quality, universal video conferencing on any endpoint.

Conferencing and collaboration services provider InerCall said it has completed beta testing its integration of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Lync Online with its Reservationless-Plus audio conferencing platform. The company said it will begin offering the product to North American customers, as well as to clients in the EMEA regions.

The West Corp. subsidiary said Lync Online, included in Office 365, integrated with its audio conferencing solution delivers a comprehensive conferencing and productivity solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

InterCall, meanwhile, also said it achieved a Gold Unified Communications Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network, which required a company to complete various tests to prove their level of technology expertise, have at least four Microsoft Certified Professionals on staff, submit customer references and demonstrate commitment to customer satisfaction.

For more:
- see this release

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With the growing adoption of tablets by consumers and enterprises, it's no surprise that more videoconferencing vendors are targeting them as endpoints.

ViVu's group conferencing service comes to Apple's iPad 2 and iPhone 4.

Desktop videoconferencing solution provider ViVu, which offers a monthly service for under $10, this week rolled out its own app for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad 2 and iPhone 4. The iOS component means the videoconferencing product now is available on PCs, Macs, Android devices and iOS devices, without requiring any proprietary hardware.

ViVu is one of a number of vendors offering a scalable cloud-based architecture and enterprise-class secure platforms, without any proprietary hardware.

Using VuRoom, up to 8 users can upstream video from their own devices and collaborate with session participants through slide and desktop sharing.

 "ViVu is committed to delivering secure and scalable videoconferencing solutions--and ensuring that they address all of the requirements for today's emerging people-centric computing model," said Sudha Valluru, founder and chief executive at ViVu.

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions for iOS devices still include the following features:

• Shared desktop capabilities, including animated PowerPoint presentations, slides and documents;
• A user-friendly, intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to make it as streamlined as possible for users to immediately benefit from visual collaboration; and
• ‘Tivo-like' instant playback and archive capabilities for additional review or knowledge sharing; and

ViVu's videoconferencing solutions are currently undergoing review by Apple and will be available free-of-charge through Apple's App Store shortly. To view a demonstration of the ViVu videoconferencing solution on the iPad2, click here.

The privately held company was founded in 2008.

For more:
- see this release

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With the pace of adoption for webconferencing and videoconferencing picking up as companies continue to look for ways to shave costs, it's no surprise that M&A activity in the space also looks to be heating up.

Last month, for example, HP sold its visual collaboration business to Polycom for $89 million. Today, European private equity group GMT Communication is announcing it is acquiring conferencing and collaboration service provider MeetingZone for $62.6 million.

The U.K.-based company generated $17.9 million in revenue last year and has presence in the U.K., North America and Germany. The company expects to grow by more than 20 percent in the current financial year ending March 2012.

The company, launched in 2002 by Steve Gandy and Tom Duffy, has seen CAGR of 20 percent over the past three financial years. Both Duffy and Gandy will remain significant shareholders; Gandy will continue in his role as CEO and Duffy will become non-executive chairman.

MeetingZone provides an array of conference call and collaboration solutions to global organizations, from self-managed reservationless conference calls to event calls for shareholder communications. The company uses "e-business self-service" principles to fully automate its operations.

"Tim and Steve have built a superb business over the past nine years, and we look forward to working with this high-caliber team," said GMT partner Stefan Franssen, who will join the company's board. "With the U.K. and European conferencing markets forecast to grow at around 10 percent a year to the end of 2013--driven by the desire of corporates to cut travel and time costs, reduce carbon emissions and cater for increasing numbers of home or remote workers-- MeetingZone is ideally positioned to capitalize on its market-leading technology. There is also scope to pursue acquisitive expansion and grow this highly scalable business internationally."

For more:
- see this release

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Telesphere recently announced the launch of VideoConnect, a cloud-based videoconferencing service for businesses of every size. Today the company announced that VideoConnect is the first worldwide commercial deployment of Broadsoft’s BroadCloud Video, an enterprise-grade videoconferencing and telepresence service that incorporates Polycom’s standards-based HDX systems and VVX 1500 business media phones, along with CounterPath’s Bria softclients.

Seven percent of U.S. physicians use online video conferencing to communicate with any of their patients, according the new Taking the Pulse study of physician digital adoption trends from pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research.

Black Diamond Video launched its comprehensive high definition conferencing solution, Sapphire-QHD1, a four-faceted package that offers bi-directional HD video and audio conferencing, unidirectional HD video and audio streaming, HD video recording, and HD image capture. Black Diamond Video’s HIPAA compliant Sapphire-QHD1 can be incorporated into BDV’s popular Integrated Digital Surgical Suite (IDSS) for medical applications or stand alone as a commercial, business, or military conferencing system.

VoIP-PAL announced the development of integrating the video conferencing feature on forthcoming new PointsPhone Mobile App for the iPhone 4G and Apple's new iPad 2. The App and the new Video Calling feature will soon be available for free downloading at the Apple App Store.

LifeSize, a division of Logitech, has just announced HD video content streaming on mobile devices using LifeSize Video Center. According to the company, now organizations can benefit from "greater communication reach and flexibility" by using HD video streaming, recording and auto-publishing to make video content available to teams working remotely on mobile devices, such as iPads and iPhones.

Vidyo has announced that KDDI, a carrier headquartered in Japan will deliver a video conferencing service based on Vidyo's multi-point, telepresence-quality solution. VidyoConferencing enables carriers, service providers and unified communications vendors to offer SVC-based video conferencing technology that delivers telepresence-quality over the Internet or general purpose IP networks.

Verizon Business has upgraded its IP communications offerings to companies looking to adopt unified communications (UC) solutions.

The latest moves include the launch of VIPER or VoIP IP Enterprise Routing, which is a new cloud-based VoIP feature that allows for business-to-business calls eliminating domestic and international per minute calling charges when calls are made between Verizon VoIP VIPER customers in the U.S. and Europe. Because the new service is enabled on the Verizon network, customers don't have to deploy any additional software or hardware. With Verizon's wide customer base, the service provider sees the potential for lots of cost savings when two customers connect.

Verizon also announced its IP Audio Conferencing solution which allows companies to launch instant voice meetings while eliminating the additional per minute charges for calls originating from a Verizon IP-enabled location.

For more:
- read the release

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New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, European Videoconferencing Endpoints Market, finds that the market earned revenues of $383.6 million in 2009 and estimates this to reach $1.03 billion in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 18.0 per cent.

Goober Networks, a Unified Communications provider, announced goober 3.0 as a public beta, a new collaboration solution that includes multi-protocol instant messaging, HD Voice to landlines and cell phones and 6-way video conferencing calls to PCs including Windows and Macintosh.

Starting tomorrow, Skype is rolling out new calling plans to more than 170 countries. 1-month, 3-month and 12-month calling plans will be available in 60-minute to unlimited packages. The range of subscriptions start from $1.09/month. The company will also introduce new video conference calls feature next week.

Phone.com and TurboBridge are partnering to make a HD telephone audio conferencing service available to Phone.com’s installed user base. This new HD phone service launch comes 3 months after Phone.com introduced its own HD Business Phone service.

Mobile conferencing iPhone App from AT&T is now available on the App Store. It integrates multiple conferencing products including audio conferencing, web conferencing and video conferencing into a single UC application.

Global IP Solutions announced the availability of video chat technology for iPhone developers to incorporate video conferencing/video chat into their mobile applications.

India's Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) aren't letting the economic recession get them down. According to a report from Access Markets International, a consulting firm that conducts research on telecommunications and business services strategy, small and medium sized businesses in the India are going to spend $48.8 million on unified communications in 2009, up over 2008. $18 million of that will be devoted to hosted VoIP products.

“India SMBs are looking at UC as a low-cost tool to communicate effectively with customers and suppliers as well as facilitate communication across multiple branch locations,” says Sumeeta Misra, AMI’s Bangalore-based Research Associate in the release. "Conferencing and collaboration tools such as video, audio, web conferencing and instant messaging will account for a majority of the total UC spending.” These tools will account for 80% of the SMBs' unified communications spending.

For more:
- read the release

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SoliCall has signed three international deals with companies from the UK, US and India for its noise reduction and echo cancellation (AEC) technology.
The Israel-based provider of software for VoIP solutions, mobile phones and IP PBXs has developed patent pending algorithms for audio improvement.

RadiSys announced today it has added voice quality enhancement (VQE) features to its Convedia Media Server. The new VQE solution removes common sources of poor voice quality in VoIP conferencing applications, including noise, packet loss and echo, and captures statistics for voice quality measurement suitable for upholding SLAs.

RadiSys VQE implements noise gating, noise reduction and noisy line detection mechanisms. The new VQE technology also includes packet loss concealment by intelligently restoring audio packets lost or unacceptably delayed by traffic congestion on the Internet. Convedia media servers with VQE also remove acoustic echo by continuously monitoring all VoIP call legs, dynamically detecting echoes and selectively applying echo cancellation.

All VQE features are supported with new audio and packet statistics, allowing conferencing service providers to continuously measure audio quality for performance measurement and support SLAs with customers.   

Benefits of the VQE package embedded into Convedia media servers include improved audio quality, minimized end-to-end delay, streamline network integration, and reduced capital expenditures and ongoing operational costs through consolidated utilization of network equipment resources (i.e. fewer network boxes means lower total cost of ownership).

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CounterPath, a desktop and mobile VoIP company, announced its fiscal third-quarter results Thursday, showing a year-over-year drop in revenue. CounterPath generated $2 million in revenue in the fiscal third quarter ended Jan. 31, 2009, compared to $2.6 million in the same period in 2008, while its net loss for the quarter of $2.2 million matched the 2008 results.

Both software and service revenue declined year-over-year, as software revenue dipped to $1.3 million from $1.7 million and service revenue fell to $0.7 million from $0.9 million in 2008.

"Our third quarter financial results reflect the decrease in bookings from key OEM customers in the quarter as a direct result of the global economic downturn," CEO Donovan Jones said in a statement. "In the current economic downturn, CounterPath is following a well developed plan to strengthen our business through more efficient operations in an effort to drive profitability."

CounterPath said it is positioned to cut operating expenses and grow revenues, as it has almost fully integrated the assets it acquired when it purchased FirstHand and BridgePort in February 2008. 

For more:
- see the CounterPath press release here 

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Mirial has released version 6.2 of its video conferencing software that steps the Softphone up from 720p to 1080p.
Cristoforo Mione, business development director at Mirial, said that with Full-HD resolution up to 1080p for both decoding and encoding, the upgraded version set the pace of the evolution in video and VoIP technology.

Global IP Solutions (GIPS) has released a survey showing that US mobile operators and equipment vendors are supportive in the drive toward real-time video.
The provider of IP multimedia processing solutions found that over 50 per cent of US wireless operators interviewed plan to launch, or increase access to, real-time video services over the next 2 years.