Tely believes the pathway into the enterprise initially will go through huddle rooms.
The company, which launched in 2010 and had focused on video communications tools for consumers, is making its push into the enterprise with the rollout of the Tely 200, a video collaboration endpoint that can be used with a broad array of cloud-based video conferencing services.
Tely officials are aiming the Tely 200 at huddle rooms, smaller areas in offices where small numbers of employees of 10 to 12 can come together and collaborate with others over video. Tely CEO Todd Abbott said that such environments have been underserved by most endpoint vendors—such as Cisco Systems, Polycom and Avaya—even as their popularity has grown.
“We’re moving to address what has been a big gap in the industry,” Abbott told eWEEK.
Analyst firms like Frost and Sullivan and Wainwright Research have noted that, by 2020, there will be tens of millions of huddle rooms worldwide, and that most are not video-enabled. In addition, Tely officials noted that Wainhouse has found growing demand for video conferencing deployments from younger employees who are now coming into the workforce. At the same time, trends toward workforce mobility, social software, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practices and the cloud are driving a push for technology that enables them to collaborate wherever, whenever and on any device they choose.
Abbott—who came to Tely four months after working for such companies as Cisco, Avaya and Seagate Technology—said traditional video conferencing technologies have been too expensive for widespread use in the enterprise, need too much intervention from a company’s IT staff and have made the user experience difficult.
“It’s not been a scalable technology,” he said.
Those are the challenges that the Tely 200 will address, Abbott said. The system includes an integrated high-definition 1080p camera with 85 degrees diagonal field of view that can be set up quickly and in any area. It includes a simple user interface—users can join a virtual meeting instantly with support for Microsoft Office 365 and Google Calendar—and integrates with such cloud video services as Blue Jeans Network, Pexip, Videxio and Zoom Communications.
In addition, the Tely 200 interoperates with enterprise video conferencing offerings from such vendors as Cisco, Polycom, Avaya and LifeSize Communications, and can be managed through the cloud with Tely Portal. The camera also can support two displays, which is needed as more video conferencing is being done on multiple screens, Abbott said.
“Screens are very inexpensive right now,” he said. “If you’re going to do video, you really have to invest in dual displays.”
The camera will go on sale in November, starting at $1,800, which includes a year of Tely Portal.
A goal is to be the endpoint of choice for enterprises that use cloud-based video conferencing services, the CEO said. Companies like Blue Jeans, Zoom and Pexip don’t have endpoints of their own, so Tely officials are looking to give users of these services the best quality they can find.
Tely is looking to find its way into the enterprise at a time of transition in the video conferencing space. IDC analysts for several years have been tracking the trend away from expensive telepresence equipment and toward cloud- and software-based solutions, and established players like Cisco, Polycom and LifeSize have been building out their portfolios to address those changes.
In addition, they also are offering products aimed at huddle spaces. For example, Polycom in May expanded its RealPresence Group Series lineup to address huddle rooms. Logitech, which owns LifeSize, earlier this year introduced its ConferenceCam Connect camera.