No Jitter Roll: Five for Friday 2019-08-08No Jitter Roll: Five for Friday 2019-08-08

In this week’s No Jitter Roll, we share news on video meeting integrations and enhancements, SD-WAN/security managed service bundles, UC and collaboration federation, and a conferencing room ecosystem.

Lifesize Enhances Video Meeting Features

Video collaboration provider Lifesize has announced several product enhancements to give users of its mobile, Web, and desktop applications additional configurability options and control capabilities.

Lifesize mobile app users are now able to screen share from their devices and switch the app to dark mode. On the Web and desktop side, a Lifesize add-in, which is available now on the Microsoft Store, will allow users to schedule video meetings and issue one-time meeting invites directly through Microsoft Outlook. Additionally, Google G Suite and Office 365 users are able to view upcoming Lifesize video meetings in their calendars, receive notifications when a meeting is about to start, and click to join.

For admins, Lifesize now offers the ability to customize meeting invites through removing non-critical default text or links, highlighting up to four PSTN numbers, or by including a path to join the meeting via Microsoft Skype for Business. Admins can also now hide meetings, room systems, or users from the full internal directory or from a defined group of users, Lifesize said.

NextPlane Adds Federation with Microsoft Teams

NextPlane last week announced that it has added federation for Microsoft Teams to its ConverseCloud service, which provides federation and interoperability services for a reported 750,000 daily active enterprise users on 20 disparate UC and collaboration platforms, the company said.

Nextplane offers ConverseCloud in a two-tiered subscription model – basic and premium. The basic federation service provides chat and presence functionality between Teams and other platforms. For the premium service, ConverseCloud will allow users to utilize all of the core collaboration functions of Microsoft Teams, including sharing presence and status, exchanging messages, participating in channels, sending rich text and emojis, and sharing files between disparate collaboration platforms inside or outside of the enterprise. Nextplane said.

Nextplane provides an enterprise-class, secure management portal as part of both service levels. With the portal, IT professionals can connect different UC and team collaboration platforms in use at their companies as well as oversee federation of disparate external platforms in use at customers, partners, or suppliers. Additionally, the portal provides customers with 12 months of charts and graphs depicting the number of unique users, the number of messages exchanged, and detailed usage reports by internal and external federated domains and platforms, Nextplane said.

Zoom Integrated into Chorus.ai, Poly

Meeting recording compliancy is an issue that faces a number of industries. To address this challenge, Chorus.ai has announced the integration of Zoom’s recording feature into its conversational AI platform, allowing for secure and compliant meeting recordings.

For a recorded meeting to be compliant, a call leader must receive permissions from participants to record the conversation -- generally, by simply asking “Can I record this meeting?” at start time. However, this approach has several potential flaws, according to Chorus.ai. For one, this model assumes a meeting host will always remember to get the recording OK from participants. Additionally, if a participant enters the meeting late and hasn’t given a nod to the recording, then the recording becomes non-complaint.

Through the integration, Zoom’s native visual and audio recording notifications appear on screen for any Chorus-recorded conversation, eliminating the need to provide notice to every meeting participant in order to record the message. Additionally, the integration provides users with more control over the recording process.

“Compliance for today’s technologies is an increasingly complex challenge. Particularly when it comes to technologies that facilitate our most basic human behaviors like the ability to communicate, but in a medium which captures, analyzes, stores and transmits those communications across various ecosystems. The kinds of solutions today that seem to rise above the pack are those that successfully balance utility, commercialization, and compliance without detracting from their ease of use,” said Adam Snukal, global privacy and data security compliance obligations specialist and partner at Greenberg Traurig, in a prepared statement.

In news of another Zoom integration, Poly announced that its USB video bar for huddle rooms, Polycom Studio, is now certified for use with Zoom Rooms. With Zoom Rooms running on Polycom Studio, users can join video meetings directly from their calendars.

Besides this latest certification, Poly offers a full suite of Zoom solutions, including its Polycom Trio, RealPresence Group Series, EagleEye Camera, Polycom VoxBox, and VVX Phone Series.

Masergy Introduces SD-WAN, Security Bundle

Just as important as compliancy is security. To address various enterprise security needs, Masergy has launched three bundles that combine its managed software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions with advanced security services.

The three combination SD-WAN/security offerings are: .

• Unified threat management (UTM): This bundle integrates Web filtering, antivirus, data loss prevention, and intrusion detection and prevention

• Threat monitoring and response: This bundle includes 24/7 threat monitoring of the SD-WAN deployment and real-time incident response by certified security experts in global security operation centers

• Managed security services: This bundle provides managed detection and response services for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments, and includes an advanced security tool suite with machine-learning behavioral analytics, embedded threat intelligence, and 24/7 security monitoring and incident response

NextPlane Adds Federation with Microsoft Teams

NextPlane last week announced that it has added federation for Microsoft Teams to its ConverseCloud service, which provides federation and interoperability services for a reported 750,000 daily active enterprise users on 20 disparate UC and collaboration platforms, the company said.

Nextplane offers ConverseCloud in a two-tiered subscription model – basic and premium. The basic federation service provides chat and presence functionality between Teams and other platforms. For the premium service, ConverseCloud will allow users to utilize all of the core collaboration functions of Microsoft Teams, including sharing presence and status, exchanging messages, participating in channels, sending rich text and emojis, and sharing files between disparate collaboration platforms inside or outside of the enterprise, Nextplane said.

Nextplane provides an enterprise-class, secure management portal as part of both service levels. With the portal, IT professionals can connect different UC and team collaboration platforms in use at their companies as well as oversee federation of disparate external platforms in use at customers, partners, or suppliers. Additionally, the portal provides customers with 12 months of charts and graphs depicting the number of unique users, the number of messages exchanged, and detailed usage reports by internal and external federated domains and platforms, Nextplane said.

Stem Audio Grows Conference Room Ecosystem

Lastly, Stem Audio this week announced the addition of huddle room cameras from AVer USA to its ecosystem of audio conferencing room products.

AVer’s CAM340+, a portable, professional-grade camera, is compatible with a range of applications and connects to desktops or laptops via a single USB cable. When used with Stem’s Wall product, the CAM340+ offers a plug-and-play video conferencing solution suitable for huddle rooms and small meeting spaces, Stem said.

The camera mounts on top of Stem Wall via a custom mounting accessory.