Vidyo, which competes with Cisco and Polycom in the video communications market, is getting $22.5 million in its latest round of fundraising.
Vidyo, which is trying to challenge heavyweights Cisco Systems and Polycom
in the increasingly competitive video communications space, is receiving a
$22.5 million cash infusion in a new round of financing.
Vidyo
officials said the money from Series D round of financing, announced Sept. 22,
will be used to boost its sales and marketing activities around the world to
grow the adoption of their software-based video collaboration offerings, which
include mobile, desktop and room systems, as well as immersive telepresence
environments.
Investors
in the latest round of financing, which brought the total amount raised by
Vidyo since its founding in 2005 to $96 million, include existing investors
Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Star Ventures and Four Rivers Group. The
financing round was led by QuestMark Partners.
"Vidyo is the only company that offers a telepresence solution that extends
from an immersive room to desktops and iPads or Android mobile devices, on a
single infrastructure," Vidyo co-founder and CEO Ofer Shapiro said in a
statement. "Vidyo is fortunate to have outstanding investors who
understand the architectural shift occurring in the market today and customers
who will no longer pay the excessive cost of traditional telepresence when they
can truly have more for less."
Vidyo over the past year-plus has rolled out offerings designed to lower the
cost of adopting and deploying video collaboration offerings. The company's
also looked to partner with other tech vendors-most recently with Ricoh-to
expand the reach of their products in the market.
At the core of Vidyo's platform is the VidyoRouter, which leverages the
vendor's Adaptive Video Layering architecture and is designed to deliver
high-definition multipoint conferencing
to various endpoints, from mobile devices and desktops to conference rooms. In
addition, the company in June unveiled
VidyoPanorama, a telepresence offering that company officials said comes in
at a fraction of the cost of systems from Cisco and Polycom.
Vidyo is trying to fill the gap between the higher cost offerings of its
competitors and the offerings from vendors like Skype, which may be less
expensive but also offer fewer choices and lower quality.
"You're always trying to manage these tradeoffs," Young-Sae Song, vice
president of product marketing at Vidyo, said in an interview with eWEEK at
the time. "Then there's us. We're trying to bring the high quality
without the high costs."
Other vendors, including Radivision and ShoreTel, also are looking to be the
low-cost alternative to Cisco and Polycom, both of which have made significant
moves over the past year to bulk up their portfolios-Cisco with its acquisition
of Tandberg and Polycom
with its purchase of HP's visual communications products.
However, those larger companies also are looking for ways to reduce the cost
of video collaboration and expand their reach, which will put more pressure on
the likes of Vidyo.
Polycom officials Sept. 14 unveiled a significant software strategy aimed at
bringing HD video collaboration to a wide range of environments-from business
to social networking to mobile-and through a variety of methods, including
on-premise, hosted or the cloud via service providers. Polycom's goal is to
increase is run rate from about $1.5 billion now to $3 billion in the next few
years.
The software strategy, which includes a rebranding of its open software
platform from the UC Intelligent Core to the Polycom RealPresence Platform, is
designed to bring Polycom's solutions into as many environments as possible,
and to make it flexible enough to adapt as the industry and customer demands
evolve, according to President and CEO Andy Miller.
"Polycom is known for the innovative solutions that have been powering
business communications for nearly 20 years and our software is at the core of
enabling a highly differentiated customer experience," Miller said in a
statement. "Moving forward, Polycom software will be increasingly present in
desktop, mobile, and social networking platforms as Polycom captures the
fast-growing demand for HD video collaboration that is open, secure, and
integrated into each customer's work and social environment."
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