When Polycom this week announced the "first enterprise (HD video] software solution for Apple, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung tablets," it took one of its rivals barely a day to fire back with a blog that opens with "They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery." So which is it? Is Polycom first to support video on both Apple and Android tablets? Or did LifeSize beat them to the punch? The answer turns out to be both...and neither...sort of.
To put the Polycom announcement into context, its RealPresence Mobility software running on iPad 2, Galaxy Tab and Xoom is available and shipping here and now. The client is free, though of course it requires an investment in Polycom's corporate video conferencing infrastructure. And, best of all, it works--I downloaded it to my Samsung tablet, dialed into a Polycom-provided number and I was in the conference. No configuration hassles, no learning process. Crystal clear audio and video quality...well, we were running the conference over the Internet, so it was good but would have been much better on a network designed to handle real-time video.
Polycom has much more flattering product photos for RealPresence Mobile. Their marketing folks would love to send you some. But I'm intimidated by those young models who video conferencing vendors love to stick on their product literature. Too many chiseled jaw lines, glossy hair, and blindingly white teeth. I much prefer real-world shots like this.
This is of course not the first time corporate video conferencing software has been ported to a tablet. Vidyo has been demoing VidyoMobile on tablets for a while now but apparently it only went GA in the past week or so, with iPad 2, iPhone and iPod Touch (do people even use Touch any more?) supported now and Android devices down the road. So is Vidyo really trailing Polycom in this area? It depends on your perspective. Polycom supports a wider range of consumer tablets, while Vidyo supports a wider range of Apple devices. And while adding Android tablet support is clearly a priority for Vidyo, I'm not getting the impression Polycom had iPhone and Android phone support at the top of R&D's to-do list. Time will tell.
Now I'm going to take a crack at where Cisco stands on this, but their client story is still complicated and changing and I may need you all to tell me if I don't have this quite right. In terms of video conferencing--or telepresence...or immersive collaboration...or whatever the current Cisco lingo is for what the rest of us are happy to keep calling video conferencing--the WebEx Mobile client supports two-way video conferencing when running on an iPad. But it’s not supported on Android phones or tablets or--oddly enough--on Cius. Cius, of course, does support video conferencing. It had better with a name like "See Us." It does this with a Jabber client that lets it "join video calls on any Cisco video endpoint, including Cisco TelePresence Systems and Cisco TelePresence EX Series endpoints." But as far as I can tell, Cius is where it's at when it comes to Cisco video conferencing and tablets. I'm not seeing any mention of video conferencing mentioned in product info for the various Jabber Mobile clients, but would be more than happy to be proven wrong on this point.
Ok, on to the LifeSize blog. It was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, for me at least. Marketing VP Michael Helmbrecht writes that LifeSize supports "the broadest range of natively interoperable smartphones and tablets," with support for a steady stream of devices added over the past year. They do iPad. They do iPhone. They do Android tabs, and not just Xoom and Galaxy but Acer Iconia and Dell Streak as well. And they run video to Captivate, Nexus, and a slew of other Android phones. As someone who follows industry news rather closely, I experienced a "Wha'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis" moment while reading this article. LifeSize supports video conferencing on tablets and smart phones? Since when? I don't remember seeing press announcements or release notes about that.
It turns out that it's not actually LifeSize that added support for all these devices over the past year. A company called Mirial did. Logitech, LifeSize's parent company, bought Mirial back in July and since then its ClearSea solution has been added to the LifeSize portfolio. Mirial ClearSea, now LifeSize ClearSea, comes as either an on-premise solution or cloud-based service, and lets users "participate in a videoconference on whatever endpoint device they have available, including a room system, PC, Mac, laptop, smartphone or tablet computer." The cloud-based iteration is free if all you want is bare-bones-basic video conferencing. It costs $29 a month if you want to add support for room-based systems, and $39 a month for HD and security. So it's a different model from Polycom, Vidyo and Cisco which are all just releasing client software that can run on mobile devices.
Oh, and as far as I can tell, ClearSea isn't just supporting LifeSize videoconferencing systems, but most any based on H.323 or SIP. So it's not so much that LifeSize has a set of software clients that extend its video conferencing technology to mobile devices. Rather LifeSize can sell you either a system or a service that can make its or any of its competitors' video conferencing solutions available on a wide range of end points, including mobile devices. So saying LifeSize has long provided support for tablets and competitors are only now catching up is not exactly true. And I suppose it's not exactly false either. Just depends on how you want to spin it.
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