Acme Packet, Glowpoint Partner on Video Conferencing Solution

Glowpoint, a provider of cloud-based managed services for telepresence, video conferencing and collaboration, and Acme Packet, a specialist in session border control solutions, announced an on-demand video conferencing solution that leverages Acme Packet's Net-Net Session Director (SD) session border controller (SBC), which will be deployed in Glowpoint's Open Video platform for business-to-business video communications. Acme Packet's Net-Net SD will be a core component in Glowpoint Open Video's cloud-based infrastructure.

Glowpoint's Open Video, the next generation of Telepresence interExchange Network (TEN) and hosted cloud-based infrastructure, will be commercially available in early 2011 and is designed to provide telepresence, video and unified communications users a way to communicate across a range of systems on differing carrier networks without compromising security policies. Combined with its managed service offerings, Glowpoint's Open Video platform will offer options for point-to-point video dialing, ad-hoc (reservation-less) multipoint conferences for mixed SIP and H.323 environments, and managed conferences and video devices.

"Interactive video is the primary driver for IP communications and is poised for dramatic growth," said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president and distinguished research fellow with research firm Yankee Group. "Glowpoint's use of Acme Packet SBCs to enable their on-demand video conferencing offering is a leading example of the next-generation all-IP service we'll see delivered as the industry finally moves beyond voice-only communications."

With the Net-Net SD, Glowpoint can offer on-demand video conferencing based on SIP-SIP, SIP arbitrage, H.323-H.323 or SIP-H.323 interworked signaling. The Net-Net SD is also designed to resolve signaling inconsistencies between endpoints. In addition, Acme Packet's Net-Safe platform creates security borders, offering a mix of security functions including Layer 2-7 denial-of-service (DoS) attack detection and prevention, topology hiding, VPN separation and interworking and dynamic access control lists (ACLs). The Net-Net SD also helps prevent fraudulent use or theft of Glowpoint's services.

"Intercompany communications is a key enabler to maximizing the utilization of video within the enterprise to increase penetration of video rooms and devices," said Anil Balani, Glowpoint's senior vice president of product development. "Glowpoint's public and private cloud supports open communications with interoperability from telepresence to the desktop by being protocol-, vendor- and network-agnostic."

As part of the prelaunch of Open Video, Glowpoint and Acme Packet are offering multiprotocol services, called Virtual Video Room (VVR), which offers a dial-in "meet me" room for ad-hoc multipoint meetings. VVR delivers B2B meetings to SIP, H.323 and ISDN-based video-as well as audio-only-participants without having to reconfigure customer-owned MCUs and without having to establish carrier interconnects for private MPLS networks.

"IP interactive video is a fast-growing solution focus for Acme Packet," said Seamus Hourihan, Acme Packet's vice president of marketing and product management. "Our Net-Net SBCs enable a secure, interoperable and reliable connection between the video conferencing solutions used by enterprises, creating the opportunity for Glowpoint to extend Open Video to a much broader market."