A few months ago Microsoft announced a new generation of their unified communications solutions, under the new brand name Lync. Lync is taking Microsoft well known Office Communication Server (OCS) into the next decade, with a new vision of unifying enterprise voice services, instant messaging and conferencing.
With Google, Apple and Microsoft entering the high definition video calling game on one hand, and everyone doing telepresence these days, one keeps wondering if there are maybe too many video services. I’ve been hearing it from various executives in different companies having difficulties understanding the fragmentation in video calling services, and I have to admit it doesn’t make sense.
My good friend Yaniv Levi, who is a veteran product manager in our Video Business Unit, defined the situation brilliantly yesterday in his presentation at the Wainhouse Research summit in Amsterdam:
With telepresence and unified communication we have taken huge steps forward in terms of our video conferencing experience, but unfortunately at the expense of compatibility and interoperability. […]
Once again we have created islands of connectivity.
Well, Yaniv was giving a presentation titled “Reconnecting The Islands”, and in his presentation he discussed the product he currently is responsible for – The RADVISION SCOPIA Video Gateway for Microsoft Lync, announced publicly yesterday as well.
The Petronas Towers in Kwala Lampur
Interoperability is the name of the game
The SCOPIA Video Gateway allows people to reconnect the two popular islands using a convenient and seamless bridge. On one hand, popular telepresence and video conferencing systems, from vendors like Cisco/Tandberg, LifeSize and Polycom; On the other hand, Lync unified communication deployments. The RADVISION gateway allows users to connect from one to another easily, thus allowing customers to utilize existing deployments and introduce new visual communication capabilities.
Interoperability is an important issue for RADVISION. I said that before and I’ll say it again. In this case our great knowhow in interoperability allows us to interconnect with the leading UC vendor, Microsoft, and connect Lync deployments to the world of standard video conferencing. This means users can merge their contacts from both worlds into one great experience.
As a matter of fact, Lync users can enjoy more capabilities when working through the RADVISION gateway – presence is displayed for any H.323 system, so that any visual communication device can now be not only accessed but queried for availability. And as the gateway is designed for scalability and affordability, it can be used by small businesses as well as large enterprises.
Yaniv and the rest of the RADVISION team are showcasing the Gateway, as well as our other products, in the ISE show this week. I feel certain that these kind of bridges between successful and useful means of communication are vital for the success of this market and the fast deployment of such services by the mass market.
Here is Yavin’s presentation about reconnecting the islands:
