Conferencing vendors readying new wares

A handful of vendors hope their new offerings, set to be announced this week, will make rich-media conferencing - mixed voice, video and data - more accessible and easier on the wallet for business users.

Among the scheduled announcements are Glowpoint's new less expensive and lower bandwidth videoconferencing service, First Virtual Communications' (FVC) enhanced Click to Meet 4.0 audio, video and Web conferencing system, and Sonic Foundry's new rich media recording systems. All three are scheduled to roll out and demonstrate new wares at next week's Infocomm show in Atlanta, an annual gathering that typically caters to audio/video dealers and integrators, but is taking on more of a network flavor this year.

Glowpoint, which offers an IP network backbone dedicated to videoconferencing traffic, will debut its Individual Video Access service targeted at small-office and home-office workers. The service will give subscribers a dedicated synchronous DSL line and guaranteed 256K bit/sec connectivity for a single endpoint with a price of $299 per month ($200 less than the company's standard business offering). As part of the new offering, resellers such as ReView Video will offer Sony's PC-11 endpoint bundled with the service, though any IP-capable endpoint will work.

Michael Brandafino, CTO at Glowpoint, says using H.264 video compression enables his company to offer the lower bandwidth service. H.264 boasts about the same video quality as the older H.263 standard at half the bandwidth. Previously, the company only offered service to enterprise-level customers via dedicated T-1 connections.

While Glowpoint is conservative about video quality at 256K bit/sec, Wainhouse Reseach analyst Andrew Davis says he think it's sufficient. "For most people, it is not compromising quality," he says. "I do a lot of calls at 256K, even though I have a 1.1M bit/sec connection."

The only downside, Davis says, is customers will not be able to use an embedded multipoint control unit (MCU) to connect more than two parties in a call without using an external bridge. This is because additional users would push the total conference bandwidth above the 256K ceiling.

Similar offerings are available from iVCI and AT&T, although Glowpoint only allows video traffic on its network.

For FVC, Infocomm will be the stage for Click to Meet 4.0's unveiling and an update to the company's Conference Server. Click to Meet is a desktop application that integrates with Internet Explorer and combines video, audio and Web conferencing through one interface. Conference Server 7.3 is the heart of the system, offering contact, presence and an MCU for connecting multiple users in a single call.

Chief among the enhancements are a new user interface, better integration with desktop applications such as Microsoft Office and Messenger, and improved security in the form of Web snapshots that let secure sites be shared with conference participants without divulging password information. FVC also is beefing up Conference Server, which now can handle up to 500 simultaneous conference users (spread across multiple conferences) and 1,000 users logged on checking calendars and presence.