VCON goes update crazy

VCON’s back in the news this week with a slew of product releaes including a new Web-based scheduling agent. What amazes me about all the product releases is the vast arsenal of IP video equipment the company has to offer customers. I thought of VCON mostly as making a couple of nice group and desktop endpoints. But it’s becoming more like Polycom (in a product sense) with endpoints, networking gear and the software applications to glue everything together.

At the heart of VCON’s offerings on the network side is the improved Media Xchange Manager (MXM) 4.0, which can be used to manage various gateways and MCU products for a range of vendors including the competition. Now with the new optional Web-based scheduling module, a user can reserve time for both point-to-point and multi-point calls using any device under the watch of MXM. The company is also offering a H.323 to SIP gateway that allows for SIP and tradition IP endpoints to participate in the same call.

While VCON does have an array of products to offer customers, it still needs to get its message out there and generate revenues. Part of the problem for VCON is it now compete with just about everyone in the video market, so it could be tougher for them to partner with companies that have complimentary offerings. Also, as Wainhouse Research’s Andrew Davis explained, the company’s IP-only strategy may have been a bit ahead of its time, stunting potential growth early on. Conferencing people tend to know nothing about IP, while the IT guys know nothing about conferencing. Getting these two people together is the key for VCON’s long-term survivability and success.