Vidyo is touting another partnership for its software-based video conferencing technology, with officials announcing that social media vendor Rounds will integrate Vidyo’s VidyoWorks into its platform.
The integration of VidyoWorks will give Rounds officials high-definition video conferencing capabilities that they can offer users of their social media platform. The move will bring a heightened real-time communication experience to the Rounds platform, which also includes online entertainment, games and videos, according to co-founder and CEO Dany Fishel.
“To achieve a truly engaging real-time social experience, there needs to be a balanced mix between the worlds of entertainment and communication,” Fishel said in a statement. “This strategic agreement with Vidyo now provides Rounds with the best infrastructure possible to deliver a unique, unparalleled social video communication experience. We believe this will significantly further our position as a leader in social video chat.”
Rounds, an Israeli company that recently closed another round of funding that brought total financing for the firm to $10.5 million, offers a social media platform that is available on both Apple’s iOS devices and those running Google’s Android operating system. At the same time, the Rounds platform also can be accessed via the Web.
Similarly, Vidyo’s technology also is platform-agnostic, and the Rounds partnership is only the latest instance of companies wanting to partner with the company, according to Vidyo co-founder and CEO Ofer Shapiro.
“The integration of the VidyoWorks platform is yet another example of how Vidyo’s technology can easily be used by application developers to deliver high-quality video experiences that scale to the masses,” Shapiro said in a statement. “We believe this will support further growth of the Rounds platform.”
Vidyo is part of a trend over the past several years that has brought a growing number of smaller vendors—such as Blue Jeans Network and Zoom Video Communications—into the increasingly competitive video conferencing market offering software- and cloud-based solutions that challenge established players like Cisco Systems and Polycom.
Trends such as cloud computing, greater mobility and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) are generating demand for video conferencing solutions that enable people to collaborate from anywhere and on any device, from notebook and desktop PCs to smartphones and tablets. The shift in the market can be seen in numbers pulled together by analyst firms such as IDC. Sales of video conferencing equipment continue to slide despite the growing demand for video communications technologies, IDC analysts have found.
Rich Costello, senior analyst of enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC, said when the latest quarterly numbers came out in December that interest in video and collaboration technologies is still high, but that the unsteady global economy has helped drive down sales.
“In addition and most significantly, we are definitely starting to see the impact of lower-cost video systems and more software-centric products and offerings on the enterprise video equipment market,” Costello said.
Vidyo offers products based on its Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology that lets people collaborate regardless of their location or device. The company also is aggressive in forging partnerships. For example, Mitel in June said it was integrating Vidyo’s technology into its unified communications (UC) solutions. That same month, Vidyo announced VidyoConferencing 3.0 with greater integration with Microsoft’s Lync UC platform.
Vidyo also is working with Google to create an SVC extension within WebRTC, a protocol designed to enable browser-to-browser video communications without the need for special plug-ins or clients.