While many businesses out there are discovering the benefits of using a video conferencing system in the place of travel for many of its contacts—not all, of course, as there are still some benefits that only face-to-face contact can deliver—trying to figure out which video conferencing system to go with is posing a problem for many companies. But IntelePeer and Vidtel may have just the fix in the form of a joint solution for cloud-based video conferencing that will provide a surprising array of benefits for business users of all sizes.
The conferencing service offered up by the IntelePeer / Vidtel joint effort, based on a combination of Vidtel's MeetMe conferencing service and IntelePeer's SIP Trunking solutions, will open up some significant versatility in the field as it works with a variety of different platforms. Not only will users be able to use standard video systems that may well already be installed, but the full range of devices—including laptops, tablets and smartphones—will be able to get in on the conferencing action as well. Since IntelePeer will market the new conferencing service with both CoreCloud unified communications (UC) systems and its SIP Trunking systems, that will draw a lot more attention to the unified solution as a better way to work with the wide array of platforms currently available for users.
While IntelePeer has a major part in this group effort, Vidtel's MeetMe system is also an indispensable part of the overall solution. MeetMe works readily with a variety of different platforms—hence, the reason why it's known as an “any-to-any,” as it will work with not only SIP endpoints, but also H.323 endpoints, a slate of SIP soft clients, browsers that handle Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) and even applications like Skype.
Vidtel's background in WebRTC is a big part of this entire equation, as not only does Vidtel offer access to WebRTC through MeetMe, but it also offers it through its Vidtel Gateway, a usage-based subscription service. The Vidtel Gateway allows businesses to use current multipoint control unit (MCU) investments, and do so without adding a lot of cost to the overall equation, providing a solution that works on several fronts at once. There's no extra capital expenditure, either, as the system is cloud-based and allows the user to only pay for what's used on the aforementioned subscription basis.
The two together can offer what IntelePeer's chief marketing officer, Margaret Norton, describes as “a comprehensive suite of communications and collaboration enablement solutions, all delivered as an easily accessed, over-the-top cloud service.” Vidtel's CEO, Scott Wharton, offered a note of assent to Norton's assessment, describing the joint solution as offering “all of the benefits of video conferencing, but with none of the traditional operational and economic barriers that have hampered deployment.”
The joint solution is currently available, but for those who would like to see it in action, it will be on demonstration June 12 – 14 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., for the INFOCOMM13 show.
This combination of factors makes for a very impressive whole that will likely make a lot of firms without a standard videoconferencing solution—and potentially even some with one already in place—take notice. The sheer level of interoperability here is noteworthy in its own right, and that kind of versatility isn't the kind of thing that goes without notice for long. So while it may not be the conferencing solution that meets every company's needs, it likely will be on the list of solutions to consider as videoconferencing shows a greater value.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
