Unified Communications Roundup -Big News To Start 2016

We’re kicking off another year of video conferencing and unified communications news, best practices and updates to the Vyopta blog with 3 impressive headline stories in the first week of January. Check out some of the biggest mergers, use cases, technology, and trends in unified communications to kick off the year.

Chhota Rajan Trial in India This Week via Video Conference

Here’s another use case for video conferencing in our judicial system: What if the defendant’s life is in danger when they appear in court for a trial? Should every citizen have the right to appear in court via video conference if they so choose?

In the case of the trial with alleged gangster Chhota Rajan, his presence at the Mumbai court in New Delhi might be “too risky”. Officials say Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) court in Mumbai may be requested to procure Rajan’s attendance through video conferencing, due to the possibility of threats on Rajan’s life by underworld mafia groups in Mumbai. Read the story here.

This is a classic example where we see use cases for a particular technology continue to branch out further and further. We’ve seen telepresence transform patient/provider interactions and help expand access to health care to individuals all over the country, make court processes more efficient with video kiosks, encourage a huge spike in remote knowledge workers in business and enable distance learning for higher education and grades K-12. We are coming to the realization that video conferencing can have a huge impact on public and private sector organizations all over the world and this week’s story is an encouraging example of the possibility of video conferencing being used to protect the rights of individuals by enabling a safer judicial process.

The Double 2 Telepresence Robot

This is the interesting story of a robotics company who designed a telepresence robot to help reshape what it means to work from home. As soon as I read the article I shared it with one of our remote team members on the East Coast. We had a good laugh thinking about what it would be like getting accustomed to seeing him rolling around the office.

But in all honesty, this would solve a lot of problems for our remote team members. If Jeff wanted to attend a meeting with his team at the office, but all of our conference rooms were full at the time, he could simply access a robot and find a space around the office to meet. Users can access this robot from a software client, controlled through the user’s device like a laptop, and off it goes. This technology is helping move video conferencing further out of the board and taking collaboration to the next level of mobility.

Lifesize Spins Out of Logitech

Lifesize (a former division of Logitech) announced it’s separation from Logitech and a brand name change to Lifesize Inc. Lifesize has been around since the early days of video conferencing, getting most of their market share from organizations with on-premise bridging and infrastructure, and as of 2013 shifted primarily to the cloud. Lifesize Inc. backed by over $17M in venture capital funding is ready to deliver the most “dynamic cloud-based video conferencing platform on the market” according to CEO Craig Malloy.