Reports have emerged suggesting that Weemo's new funding round has finished, and now, not only does Weemo have the extra $3 million it was after, but the new total amount has cleared $5 million. This makes things look very bright for Weemo, as well as for its upcoming line of Web-based real-time communications products.
Weemo plans to put its new round of funding, backed up in part by IDInvest, to good use, getting its line of solutions front and center with potential users. Weemo already has, at last report, several software vendors as well as several service providers interested in using Weemo's line of WebRTC solutions to bring real-time video experiences to users, and that's a pretty important step.
While WebRTC itself offers up several impressive possibilities in terms of providing voice and video collaboration along with file sharing technologies, Weemo's line of solutions looks to take the already broad array of services possible with WebRTC and build on that momentum with a service that works across several different platforms to use Weemo's already operational cloud infrastructure. This in turn allows browsers that don't specifically support WebRTC—like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, as Microsoft is currently hard at work on its own WebRTC-style standard, CU-RTC-WEB—to get in on the action at least somewhat, as well as offering support for native applications, in addition to screen sharing and video collaboration tools.
Weemo's focus is on an API system, making things a little simpler in terms of getting business workflows under control and making video collaboration a little easier to undertake. Weemo co-founder and CEO Thomas Cottereau described Weemo's offering as making it “incredibly simple to add over-the-top video communication services to a business application.”
But Weemo won't be alone in the WebRTC market space, and with an increasingly large number of such suppliers coming out—some of which are even looking to offer up that kind of service at no charge—it's left some wondering just what's behind the move to get more cash behind Weemo. Weemo itself has previously been seen as focusing on “ease of use,” which is certainly an important feature for just about any software product. After all, what point is there in software that can do just about anything if it's impossible to get it to work? But whether or not this will be sufficient—especially in the face of rapidly growing competition—is something only time can truly tell.
One thing, however, is quite clear: the WebRTC market will only increase from here, and offer a lot more opportunity for users to get in the field. Weemo may be able to keep up with the other entrants, especially given that it seems to have some interested buyers already in play, but the fullest picture will take some time to develop.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
