Feature

Seeing the Opportunity

Conferencing
Video conferencing is gaining momentum. The reasons to buy have not changed over the years; reducing costs of travel, increasing productivity and bringing together geographically dispersed people.

Tempura was supported on the day by their key suppliers; Vidyo and LifeSize with Fraser Dean, Director of Sales for Vidyo EMEA Partners, telling us that over the last 25 years video conferencing has struggled to deliver a quality user experience that was easily accessible.

“With Vidyo applications our codec enables a high quality experience. The SVC (Scalable Video Coding) codec we use, which was invented by our company in 2008 SVC and made available as open source resource for other vendors, provides a quality experience without the normal bandwidth restrictions associated with competitor products.

Fraser Dean of Vidyo Fraser Dean of Vidyo

Likewise, the cost of using CPE based video conferencing per user has generally been expensive which made scalability of video as an application within a business very expensive with the result that only a select few will get access to the application.

However, deploying video as a software application at a very reasonable cost creates wider, more general adoption within an organisation. And this is what we do all within in a very user and channel friendly wrap.”

Dean says that the traditional Audio Visual (AV) reseller typically sells CPE based video solutions and they do not normally touch user networks and whilst this ‘conference room’ type systems market is good it is the video enabling of personal devices, driven by the consumerisation of business IT trend, where dramatic growth is being experienced. After all, why would you want to drive for two hours to reach a boardroom just to take part in a video conference?

This movement of video out of the boardroom means that AV resellers need to become involved in the network but the trend also opens up the market for other, IT and comms based resellers.”

Dean and his team demonstrated their portfolio of VC products to the audience starting with the Tempura branded easy.vc which starts from £24.00 per user per month to deploy. Users can enjoy a 10 way meeting room per user with unlimited guest invitations

“This application, which uses Web RTC, embedding software in to the web page which makes it simple to add users to VC whether on web browser, room system smart phone or tablet and on any network – you just need an internet connection from your office or from say Starbucks! Cost free trials are also encouraged by Vidyo and our distributor Tempura.

Vidyo concluded an impressive presentation by saying there were six reasons to choose their company as a VC partner.

1. Software economics

2. Quality collaboration applications

3. Reliable performance

4. Global scalability

5. Investment protection

6. Seamless integration

Expectation…

Comms Business Magazine spoke to Jacob Van Praag of reseller Freedom Communications who sells to SMEs to find out what he was looking for from the Tempura Video Conferencing Open Day.

“We sell Lync, HP and Alcatel comms and IT solutions and already purchase some video applications from Lifesize via Tempura. What I am looking for is a quick and easy VC solution that is low in CAPEX that can be deployed simply with my clients. I want more reasons to see my customers and sell them something different and whilst many cannot afford a £10k CAPEX solution most can readily take on a £100 per month application OPEX solution.”

Kevin O’Shea, Sales Manager for Tempura Communications told Comms Business that video conferencing solutions are available for both hosted and CPE based deployments.

“In our experience the SME with say 100-150 users generally tends to opt for monthly subscriptions on an OPEX model. Larger corporates and enterprises are also inclined to use this model but for their evaluation and pilot roll outs and then consider a shift to CPE based deployment depending upon their needs and circumstances.

The good news is that we have solutions to meet all these needs and the support services that resellers need to capitalise on the growing sales opportunity.”

The success of this, the second such Open Day for Tempura, means that another day for resellers will be scheduled in Basingstoke very shortly.