Coexisting With Multiple Video Conferencing Vendors

vyopta-coexist_blackWhat are large organizations doing with complex multi-vendor collaboration environments?

Expanding them.
What are video technology vendors doing about it? Coexisting.

Yesterday, the team and I were talking philosophically about our mission and purpose as a company. What is the one thing that all Vyopta customers have in common? Everyone who purchases video conferencing analytics from us is familiar with AT LEAST one of our video conferencing vendor partners.

Many of them are familiar with a majority if not ALL of our technology partners because they’ve considered more than one video technology vendor when deploying video software and hardware clients in their network.

Video Collaboration Frankenstein

A majority of companies using video now have multi-vendor video environments. Video conferencing hardware, software clients, and technology from multiple vendors can often combine to form a Frankenstein collaboration environment. Sometimes this Frankenstein works amazingly well and companies continue to grow video adoption and build onto the monster piece by piece. Most of the time, however, a mess of tangled video technology creates poor user experience and high error rates.

I thought about all of those video systems interoperating in a huge UC / video collaboration web, and then I thought of a bumper sticker that I’m pretty sure every driver has seen at least once. It’s not ADD – in fact, I’m talking about our “video collaboration Frankenstein” being the result of the idea illustrated in this bumper sticker. It reads “Coexist”. Only the letters were made of the logos and symbols from iconic games and gaming systems.

This same concept can be applied to video and UC with different video technologies operating in peace and harmony. I don’t think it requires much more explanation, so I mocked up an image using a few of the technology partner logos that our product supports.

Embedded within the logos you can read the word “Coexist”. I know it’s kind of cheesy, but the idea from Vyopta’s perspective is that you should be able to manage, monitor and optimize your Frankenstein video environment no matter how “Frankensteiny” it may be. As more and more of the top video vendors improve interoperability and “coexist”, management tools must also be built to “coexist” and interact with an increasing number of versions and platforms of collaboration technology.