Siemens Enterprise Communications today closed the acquisition of FastViewer, a four-year-old company based in Neumarkt, Germany.
Both companies are privately-held, and terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
I spoke with Chris Hummel, SEN's CMO, and Ross Sedgewick, VP Global Solutions Marketing, late this afternoon about the acquisition. They explained that FastViewer's technology allows data and video conferencing over the web without requiring the user to download a client. It's also highly scalable, because the server software separates session management from the actual connections. "The scalability of session management is quite high, without having to create multiple databases" as you increase the number of sessions the system manages, Chris Hummel said.
The client lets users move between web, chat and video dynamically--something that many vendors' UC clients allow. What's unique about the FastViewer technology, according to Chris and Ross, is that the conferencing client doesn't live on the user's desktop, meaning it doesn't need to be installed on every user's desktop. Instead, it's a "streaming executable" that streams to the PC's memory and runs from there, then disappears when the conference is finished. There's a version of the client software for all major smartphones as well.
SEN has had an existing partnership with FastViewer, and the newly-acquired system will be renamed OpenScape Web Collaboration, which is part of the OpenScape UC Suite 2011 that Siemens will officially release next week (we'll have a full rundown on the new OpenScape Suite on Monday).
FastViewer currently has 4,000 customers in 12 countries, mostly in Europe, Chris Hummel said.
