Opening the Door to the Video Conference Room
RADVISION’s SCOPIA™ Desktop solution enables users to join conferences from anywhere leveraging and extending the reach of high quality room systems
When we think of multiparty video conferencing, we think of the board room. Soft big chairs, a long mahogany table, and large plasma screens and speakers. Nice. An environment where everyone benefits from high quality voice, video and data collaboration with colleagues or partners in other conference rooms. But is it really everybody? What about the senior sales manager who was on the road? Or other team members who are busy doing their jobs well and therefore, not in the office within reach of the video conference room. For years, organizations and enterprises have wished there was a simple way to include desktop or laptop users in video conferences no matter where they happen to be.
To be honest, there were a few software-based video conferencing solutions available. But they involved complex installations, prohibitive licensing fees and firewall traversal issues hindered widespread use.
Pushing the Limits of Room Systems
Visual communications beyond the boardroom seemed out of reach. And for good reason. There are lots of obstacles to overcome.
- How do you make the video network more accessible to enable teleworkers to participate in meetings, to enable road warriors to join a video conference, or to collaborate with partners and suppliers?
- How do you effectively share presentations between room-based conferencing systems and PCs?
- How do you effectively manage PC video users?
- How do you get through the airtight corporate or organization firewall?
Existing alternatives were not in sync with real business needs. You could use the phone, but then what do you have all that fancy video equipment for? Data collaboration is available with Web conferencing. But this is not compatible with room system H.239-based data collaboration. Software-based desktop video conferencing clients offered by endpoint vendors involve costly purchase per user models, and keeps ad hoc video collaboration with partners, customers or colleagues still out of reach. All of these solutions are also complex to install and maintain and don’t solve the firewall traversal issue without purchasing and installing a dedicated solution.
What today’s “on-the-go” global businesses and dispersed organizations need is a Web-based desktop client solution that is as easy to use as Web conferencing and that can be used by anyone, from anywhere – inside or outside the enterprise or organization firewall.
SCOPIA Desktop: Where the Room System and Desktops Meet
RADVISION’s newly introduced SCOPIA Desktop is an add-on solution to the SCOPIA infrastructure family and allows room systems to easily invite remote employees, external partners, and colleagues to an existing video conferencing network. SCOPIA Desktop has a built-in Web endpoint for remote and desktop participants, Web-based H.239 data collaboration, built-in firewall traversal and conference broadcast capabilities.SCOPIA Desktop makes video conferencing a win-win proposition across the board. Investments in existing room systems are maximized. With free, unlimited distribution, an endless number of users enjoy the experience of the meeting room and leverage the high quality, powerful systems to do their job better.
SCOPIA Desktop enables enterprises and organizations to see beyond the horizon of their video conference room, with a simple and easy-to-use extension that maximizes ROI without having to do an overhaul of existing PBX’s or enterprise groupware deployments.
For more information about SCOPIA Desktop, visit www.radvision.com
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