Video Conferencing, Full Steam AheadVideo Conferencing, Full Steam Ahead

Video conferencing adoption is accelerating due to growing demand, reduced prices, and availability of cloud-based meeting and interoperability services, as Irwin Lazar, VP and service director at Nemertes Research, shared in his recent No Jitter post on the firm's recent findings. And if that adoption data holds true, enterprises have plenty of new offerings to consider for video-enabling their collaborative work spaces.

With the AV industry's InfoComm event taking place next week, video vendors have been busy getting the word our on their latest news. Here's some of what we've heard so far.

Polycom Introduces Pano
A couple weeks back, Polycom and Zoom announced a partnership, introducing the Zoom Connector for Polycom, which allows Polycom video solution users one-click access to Zoom meetings. At the time of that announcement, Karthik Arumugam, VP strategy and business development at Polycom, took the time to go over some of the biggest barriers to video conferencing adoption. Top of the list was complexity.

If that's the case, then today's announcement from Polycom is likely to continue breaking down these barriers, as it aims for easy set-up and configuration. Today Polycom unveiled Pano, a "little black box" for conference rooms that enables users to share up to four simultaneous content streams -- including live video -- for viewing side-by-side on a screen, as illustrated in the image below. With Pano, users also can annotate on top of the shared content, Marty Sexton, senior product marketing manager at Polycom, told me in a recent briefing

Pano can connect to any display to enable wireless content sharing, and works with PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones. Pano has strict security safeguards, requiring users to enter a security PIN to enter each session, limiting content sharing to a designated target monitor, and preventing local storage of shared information. Users, however, can save annotations to Google Drive or other cloud repository.

"Think about how you share content today," Sexton said. "Today most presenters will put a piece of content up and pass the cable to take turns. Pano allows them to move beyond a single cable experience."

The majority of enterprises do not have touch-enabled environments, Sexton said. As the price of touch screens comes down further, enterprises will likely transition, but since we are not yet at that point, Polycom designed Pano to work with legacy user devices. For annotation, a mouse plugs into a USB port and serves as a "writing" tool, Sexton explained.

Pano, available immediately in 138 countries, is priced at $1,990.

Logitech Goes After the Huddle Room
Last we heard from Logitech in February, it had just introduced Brio, its advanced webcam with 4K image sensors, facial recognition capabilities and more. Now Logitech is moving from the desktop into small rooms, today unveiling MeetUp, a huddle room conferencing cam.

MeetUp features a 120-degree field of view, which nicely fits in view everyone seated at a small table, as Logitech's Joan Vandermate, head of marketing, Collaboration Business Unit, recently showed me in a demo. Additionally, the camera can pan another 25 degrees to the left and right, offering 170 degrees total of any given room.

The camera features three beamforming, omnidirectional microphones featuring noise and echo cancellation. These microphones are certified to work with Microsoft Cortana to accept voice commands. For use in larger rooms, Logitech offers an optional expansion microphone for MeetUp.

MeetUp, which will be available in July for $899, will work with most any video conferencing software application or cloud service, including Microsoft Skype for Business and Cisco WebEx, Logitech said.

Separately, Logitech introduced a mobile app that can turn any Android or iOS smartphone into a soft remote for all Logitech video conferencing products.

Next page: Altia Systems, Oblong, Blue Jeans and PanoptoAltia Systems Launches PanaCast Whiteboard
Building off the success it has had with its two-year-old PanaCast 2 panoramic video camera, Altia Systems has partnered with Intel to launch PanaCast Whiteboard. The companies describe PanaCast Whiteboard as computer vision software for displaying whiteboard content as an individual screen tile within a video conference.

Further, PanaCast Whiteboard automatically adjusts image quality and corrects distortion so users receive a clear view of the whiteboard image. The algorithms at the core of this solution run on the Intel Core i-series processor family, the companies said. Via a free app called PanaCast Vision, users are able to adjust the camera's field of view. Ultimately, users see a full 180- degree 4K camera view alongside shared whiteboard content.

PanaCast Whiteboard is compatible with various video conferencing platforms, including Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Skype, and Zoom. Users just need a PC running quad-core Intel Core i7 processor or above. For Whiteboard, Altia charges an annual license fee of $199 per PanaCast 2 camera.

"My clients are sometimes more interested in my whiteboard sketches than seeing my face," said Dean Heckler, president of PanaCast Whiteboard beta user Heckler Design, in a prepared statement. "When using PanaCast Vision, our whiteboard becomes an active meeting participant, creating another powerful communication tool for Heckler Design."

Oblong Introduces Mezzanine Series
Oblong is known for large-scale elaborate immersive collaboration spaces such as was shown in last year's No Jitter feature on Mercy Virtual's telehealth practice. While the company has been known for large installations, it recently unveiled hardware and software aimed at bringing the entry price for a full Mezzanine solution (its flagship immersive visual collaboration solution) to below $50,000.

Mezzanine is now available for rooms of all sizes, and Oblong has rolled out a new naming convention to help businesses identify the right solution for their particular use cases. The Mezzanine 200 series, pictured below, is a dual-screen configuration aimed at small and medium-sized rooms. It enables concurrent viewing of up to 10 shared devices, gestural interaction (pixel slinging), and real-time control for multiple participants.

Also new is the Mezzanine 300 series, which is similar to the 200 series but has a three-screen configuration for more content streaming. The Mezzanine 600 and 650 series are for larger rooms, with a six-screen array -- the type of large room setups for which Oblong has become known.

Additionally, Oblong added integrations with enterprise utilities like calendaring and Skype for Business.

In a prepared statement, Oblong CEO John Underkoffler said the company hopes the newly expanded Mezzanine portfolio will enable more people in the workplace to "become more creative, collaborative and productive."

Oblong said more details will be available next week at Infocomm.

Blue Jeans, Panopto Team Up
Panopto, a company focused on creating searchable video libraries, has partnered with video communication provider Blue Jeans Network to automate the process of managing, sharing, and searching inside video conference recordings. The partnership will work by way of an integration between Panopto's video platform and BlueJeans onVideo Meetings and Primetime Events products, based on the Universal Capture Specification open standard, the press release stated.

BlueJeans video recordings will upload automatically to Panopto's video content management system, which will encode the recordings for playback on any device. Panopto also indexes recordings so that viewers can search a spoken word or shared content from within a meeting. Further, full transcriptions of the spoken content are available.

Via the partnership, BlueJeans aims to give users a way to review meeting transcripts and notes, jumping to highlights, on demand and from any device, Krish Ramakrishnan, Blue Jeans CEO, said in a prepared statement.

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