Lifesize today
announced the acquisition of visual collaboration vendor Kaptivo and release of a new digital whiteboard application, the latest moves in what is shaping up to be a busy year for this one-time videoconferencing company, as it reshapes itself as an all-encompassing provider of enterprise communications.
The transition began some five months ago when Lifesize announced an investment by private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners and the simultaneous merger with Serenova, a first-generation cloud contact center company under Marlin’s ownership for the past five years (
read related story). Then in June, the companies announced that they would be carrying forward under the Lifesize brand. Regarding this latest news, Lifesize didn’t disclose terms of the deal but did say that the entire Kaptivo team has come on board with the acquisition.
In a briefing with No Jitter last month, Lifesize CEO Craig Malloy reiterated the position that the combined company is meant to serve as “the foundation to build a full-stack, well-integrated enterprise unified communications company.” Evidence that it is working to deliver on that goal followed late last month with the launch of CXEngage Video, a function that enables contact center agents to initiate a video conversation with a customer via text message, email, open chat, or another messaging channel, as we
wrote at the time.
During our briefing, Malloy hinted that additional acquisitions would be coming, as the company looked to stretch its communications reach. “Under the sponsorship from Marlin, we’ll be continuing to add product solutions to our portfolio of UC products, potentially around UCaaS, IP telephony, advanced collaboration, video content management, etc. — there’s a number of different categories within the giant unified communications space.”
Kaptivo, which focuses on content creation technology, fits in Malloy’s “advanced collaboration” category. In fact, Kaptivo earned a finalist spot in our 2019 Best of Enterprise Connect Award for
Best Communications/Collaboration Device for an attachable whiteboard device that captures and digitizes content in real-time for simultaneous sharing during video meetings. The same type of capability is now available via the Kaptivo-powered digital whiteboard app integrated into the Lifesize video meeting platform. Lifesize suggested use cases such as:
- Digitized content sharing among remote meeting participants, with advanced capabilities such as bidirectional annotation and automatic translation
- Adding interactivity and collaboration capabilities to conference room and classroom whiteboards via a single-vendor bundle (i.e., Lifesize meeting room systems and Kaptivo whiteboarding)
- For the contact center, allowing agents using CXEngage Video, mentioned above, to document and annotate customer-facing content like billing statements or assembly instructions
The Kaptivo-powered integrated digital whiteboard app is included for free with Lifesize meetings for all customers. The Kaptivo integration with CXEngage Video will follow at a yet-to-be-disclosed time.
As Malloy told me, Lifesize “is off and running.” We’ll have to see where its plans for building a unified enterprise communications platform take it next.
