The last two postings in our Guide to Videoconferencing Services series described the types of videoconferencing services available from carriers. This week we introduce the vendors upon whose products these services are built. Polycom, Tandberg, and RADVISION are the three most well established traditional room-based video conferencing vendors. More recently LifeSize joined the group with products focused exclusively on high definition (HD) room-based conferencing. Cisco and HP are market newcomers, having both introduced telepresence systems a mere two years ago.
RADVISION focuses on the infrastructure components of videoconferencing such as bridges, gateways, and gatekeepers--and it has OEM relationships with lots of suppliers including LifeSize and Cisco. Polycom, Tandberg, and LifeSize sell their endpoint and infrastructure components through channels to enterprise customers. In addition to selling its own videoconferencing equipment, Cisco promotes network upgrades to support the new application, pocketing more network equipment revenue in the process. Hewlett Packard's approach to telepresence is more holistic than other vendors. HP delivers what it calls it Halo telepresence suites and supports them with a dedicated network and management services.
Many of the carriers we interviewed for this series resell equipment from Polycom, Tandberg, LifeSize, and Cisco to their enterprise customers and package those products with the network support needed to make them work. HP does not sell through carriers because it competes with them by providing a complete, managed solution.
In our final installment we will tell you specifically which carriers are offering what services.
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