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Company Name: Mersive Technologies Inc. (enterprise collaboration tools)
Company description: Mersive is a provider of wireless media streaming and collaboration solutions that enable multiple users to simultaneously share content from laptops, tablets, and phones to any meeting room display–securely and with the greatest ease of use. Solstice vastly increases meeting productivity and collaboration by putting content sharing at the center of the meeting experience.
Mersive delivers software-based products that use commodity hardware and existing enterprise network infrastructure. With more than 4,000 corporate and higher education customers and 30 of the F100, Mersive is changing how industry leaders worldwide work and learn. Mersive is the outgrowth of academic research conducted by Mersive CTO and founder Christopher Jaynes, Ph.D, with funding sources that include U.S. intelligence agencies and the national security community. Mersive was founded in 2006 and is led by Rob Balgley, former CEO of Jabber. The company is based in Denver, Colo. For more information, go here.
Markets: Corporate, government, higher education, technology, collaboration, networking, unified communications, audio & visual.
International Operations: Canada, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Ireland, Asia-Pacific, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Europe, Middle East, Africa.
Products and Services
Solstice version 4.0 and Gen3 Pod: Offers a wireless presentation experience that puts content at the center of every meeting. Fit for any meeting space–such as conference rooms, huddle spaces or classrooms–Solstice helps customers spend less time setting up and more time collaborating. With dual display support, HDMI-input, and Power over Ethernet plus, the Gen3 Pod features the most advanced specs in a pod to date.
Solstice Dashboard and Solstice Discovery Services (SDS): Supports secure, scalable deployment on managed IT networks. The Dashboard provides centralized, one-to-many management of every room in the Solstice deployment and exposes the additional features and capabilities of Solstice Enterprise Edition. SDS provides an IT-friendly, non-broadcast mechanism for Solstice discovery, which supports user capabilities such as click-to-connect and Solstice Multi-Room.
Mersive Kepler: Is a powerful deployment monitoring and meeting analytics solution designed to improve large-scale Solstice deployments. The cloud-based service streamlines ongoing oversight of Solstice deployments and provides actionable meeting analytics based on Solstice usage. Kepler is available for Solstice Pods with current software maintenance.
Key Features
Increased Meeting Engagement: Solstice improves meeting start-up times, participant engagement, and productivity when teams come together. Solstice Ink allows users to wirelessly mark up displayed content from anywhere in the room by simply pointing and drawing with their smartphone.
Any number of participants can share any amount of content simultaneously: Solstice removes technical barriers to better collaboration in the meeting room by allowing any number of connected users to share unlimited content. Stream device screens, share videos, post individual application windows, and view web content–customers can bridge them all into their meetings seamlessly with Solstice.
Secure collaboration for guests: The Solstice Pod’s dual-network mode supports secure collaboration between users on two separate WiFi/Ethernet networks, such as corporate and guest users. The Pod’s two network interface cards are completely distinct with separate routing tables, enabling seamless collaboration without compromising the security of either network.
Enterprise-grade security features: Solstice has been deployed in some of the most secure government and private organizations in the world and is hardened with multiple layers of security features and protocols. User and admin authentication, network encryption of Solstice traffic, and annual 3rd-party penetration testing–these features and more ensure that every Solstice deployment remains secure.
Ubiquitous collaboration platform: Solstice blends ease of use and cost efficiency into a platform that enables teams to collaborate and innovate through dynamic, engaging, and inclusive meetings that can take place in virtually any workspace.
Insight and Analysis
Peer review site G2 Crowd reported the following:
What do you like best? “We use Solstice pods at work to project onto two large screens. They are easy to connect to once you download it. All you have to do is open the app and type in the 4 digit code. Also, I like that when you are sharing your screen that the disconnect button is very compact. It does not take up much of the screen… so it does not interfere with other content that you have up.”
What do you dislike? “I do not like that you don’t have the option to pause your screen. When I am giving a lecture, I sometimes need to hide the screen from students (if I need to check a grade or want to do work while they try a problem on their own). The only option that comes up is to stop sharing screen.”
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Gartner Peer Insights reported the following: “Our experience with Mersive and the Solstice product has been great. They are very communicative with us providing constant updates and providing a high level of service. We have deployed Over 130 instances of their hardware with minimal to no issue with most. Our customer base and internal users work with the product exclusively for all display needs. I am really excited for the future of the product including upgrades to the hardware and additional services it will offer. The Kepler analytics dashboard has been a powerful tool.”
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Frost & Sullivan reports:
“Solstice is available both as the software that powers the Solstice Pod–a small, turnkey device for meeting rooms that lack collaboration hardware and for bring your own device (BYOD) environments-and as a Windows software download for existing in-room PCs,” said Robert Arnold, Principal Analyst. “Solstice consistently offers myriad functionalities, enabled by enterprise-grade network security, including: support for any number of users sharing any amount of content from any device; support for native iOS screen mirroring; customizable display layouts; multi-touch display support; and configurable sharing options, access control, and use modes.”
“While perfectly suited for small-scale requirements, Solstice’s numerous optional functionalities ensure it finds significant application in large-scale deployments as well. Mersive also just released its Kepler cloud-based software tool, which will deliver Solstice monitoring and diagnostic tools, alerts, usage reporting and other analytics, as well as customizable configuration tables empowering technology and facilities managers to make data-driven planning and budgeting decisions about meeting spaces,” noted Arnold. “Overall, Mersive empowers both admins and users by allowing them to choose from a variety of user capacity options, license editions, network connections, admin interfaces, third-party integrations, and pre-built features tailored for business and education environments.
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List of current customers: Comcast, Bridgestone, General Electric, Toyota, Samsung, WeWork, Yale University, Unilever, BlueCross Blue Shield, AstraZeneca, Newell Rubbermaid
Delivery: Software-as-a-service via a Solstice Pod to display via HDMI cable.
Pricing: The Solstice Pod features tiered pricing, starting with SGE Standard Gen2i ($799), Unlimited Standard Gen2i ($999), SGE Enterprise Gen2i ($1,099), Unlimited Enterprise Gen2i ($1,299), SGE Enterprise Gen3 ($1,199), Unlimited Enterprise Gen3 ($1,399).
The Solstice Software features tiered pricing, starting with SGE Standard Gen2i ($799), Unlimited Standard Gen2i ($999), SGE Enterprise Gen2i ($1,099) and Unlimited Enterprise Gen 2i ($1,399).
Other key players in this market: Crestron and Barco
Email contact information for potential customers
For more information, go here.