LifeSize Offers Dashboard for Cloud-Based Video Conferencing

LifeSize Communications in May launched its cloud-based video conferencing offering. Now, the company is giving users a dashboard monitoring system that gives them greater insights into how the software-as-a-service solution is being used and by whom.

LifeSize Cloud was introduced three months after Craig Malloy returned as CEO after two years away from the company, which is a division of Logitech. The solution is designed to offer business-class video collaboration to organizations that is scalable, simple to use and affordable, and will let people participate in conferences wherever they are and on any device.

With the new dashboard monitoring solution, organizations receive the information they need—from who is using the technology and in what rooms, to what devices are used to access the calls, and how long the video conferences last—to determine how to meet the video collaboration needs of their businesses.

“The new dashboard gives our customers a quick, consolidated and sophisticated view of how to best to use Lifesize Cloud for their specific needs,” Michael Helmbrecht, vice president of product marketing, said in a statement. “When you have hundreds of employees across many offices around the globe, getting a clear, 360-degree view of meetings and usage used to be a logistical nightmare.”

Through the dashboard and its simple user interface, customers will see a complete report that will help them more easily manage meetings and resources, and live metrics on usage and demand.. In addition, they can collect and share reports on a monthly and quarterly basis that include the most recent meeting data, officials said.

The new features come at no additional costs to customers.

LifeSize is one of the established video conferencing vendors—along with the likes of Cisco Systems and Polycom—that are continuing to pivot to software and the cloud as organizations move away from hardware-based offerings. IDC analysts have tracked the sales decline of video conferencing gear over the past several years, while noting that video conferencing continues to be of interest to enterprises that are looking to improve collaboration between employees, customers and partners.

“The mixed video equipment results are … indicative of the ongoing transition from a primarily hardware-based reporting model to one impacted by the interest in and growth of video subscription services,” Rich Costello, senior analyst for enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC, said in a statement. “On the bright side for the video equipment vendors, most or all of these vendors now offer, or are ramping-up to offer, cloud-based video alternatives to customers—in addition to their own lower-cost, premises-based systems.”