January 13, 2012
The Year Ahead - with RADVISION's Bob Romano
By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC
TMCnet recently asked some of the leading lights in the industry for their thoughts about 2011 and what’s in store for the year ahead.
Here’s what Bob Romano (News - Alert), vice president of corporate marketing at RADVISION, had to say.
What was your company’s greatest achievement in 2011?
Romano: Overall, 2011 was a big year for RADVISION. We successfully expanded our product portfolio to enhance our network solutions with a full line of videoconferencing clients including desktop, room and immersive telepresence systems. But one of our most exciting milestones was being the first company to publicly launch a standards-based enterprise-grade HD videoconferencing application for mobile devices – SCOPIA Mobile v3.
Mobile video is really heating up, and our mobile app is the most feature-rich in the market. SCOPIA Mobile is unique because it is fully interoperable with standards-based videoconferencing, allowing voice, video and data collaboration with telepresence and room systems. It also has unique capabilities like our slider feature, which allows each user to review previously presented content without interrupting the call. And it is simple to use with one-touch click-to-join capabilities, full moderation capabilities, and great use of Apple’s Multi-touch platform.
Also exciting is our engagement with Microsoft (News 
- Alert). Video is a key component to any organization’s unified communications strategy, and while video is part of the Lync platform, it doesn’t natively interoperate with existing videoconferencing deployments. RADVISION and Microsoft have teamed to offer the SCOPIA Video Gateway (News - Alert) for Microsoft Lync, which provides seamless interoperability between the two environments. The SCOPIA Video Gateway became generally available last year and is the first and only video gateway qualified for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, with Lync qualification right around the corner. We’re excited to offer investment protection for the more than two million standards-based video endpoints deployed in the market today.
What are your business’s goals for 2012?
Romano: RADVISION is in the middle of a transformation from a company that primarily sold video network solutions through OEM and resale partnerships to a full portfolio solutions company selling under the RADVISION brand. Although we are well known as innovators in videoconferencing technology since 1992 and are the backbone of many of leading video vendors’ infrastructure, we’ve only recently come to market under our own brand. While Cisco and Polycom (News - Alert) lead the market today, RADVISION is a viable, more cost-effective and more flexible solution for videoconferencing, and we’re planning on completing our transformation and gaining market share in 2012.
Another great opportunity for us in 2012 is with the service provide market. Our video network solutions have always been uniquely tailored for the demanding requirements of the service provider market, and we are already the platform of choice for many of the world’s leading service providers. As hosted video becomes more prevalent, we plan to grow our penetration and share in this market not only with our infrastructure but also our endpoints for an overall solution that is reliable, flexible, scalable and innovative – all of which are critical for service providers offering hosted solutions. We view 2012 as a year for tremendous growth in this market.
Finally, I look forward to new offerings from RADVISION that will help our customers – and by customers, I mean across the board – whether we’re talking about verticals like health care, education and government, or the general enterprise. The other area where we see a lot of opportunity is in SMBs; a lot of companies pay lip service to this market, but RADVISION has viable, affordable solutions geared for SMBs today, and we look forward to further tapping into this market.
How would you describe your outlook for business and the economy at large heading into 2012?
Romano: I’m optimistic that the general economy will get better in 2012, but even if it remains unsettled, I believe videoconferencing will continue to grow. The value of visual collaboration is becoming very – clearly creating firm cost justification for our customers. With video, they’re able to save money, streamline processes, and increase productivity, enabling them to invest more in the technologies that matter most.
If there’s one thing you’d like to see happen related to business in the year ahead, what is that one thing?
Romano: I think the biggest thing that would accelerate the adoption of videoconferencing is interoperability. Ironically, because video is such a growing industry there are a lot of video solutions being brought to market, and they are not always interoperable. For example, there are enterprise UC platforms, telepresence offerings, consumer video solutions and mobile video applications. Most of these don’t natively interoperate with each other.
Customers would appreciate the flexibility to participate in a video call with whichever application or device is available to them. We’re working on solutions to bridge all these environments together, but what I’d really like to see is more vendor cooperation to alleviate interoperability woes and make videoconferencing seamless. As an industry we are making progress with organization like the UCI Forum, which is making headway in its video interop programs. The benefit of leaving this to the UCI Forum is that it won’t be designed to support the interests of one specific vendor.
If 2011 was the year of cloud and/or the year of the tablet, 2012 will be the year of...
Romano: For videoconferencing, 2011 was the year of talking about the cloud and the tablet. I believe 2012 will be the year of delivering on simple inexpensive cloud-based services for video collaboration. This will expand the market to small and medium-sized businesses, which to date have been underserved because deploying video infrastructure has been cost prohibitive and/or too complicated for them. Being able to buy services from the cloud will eliminate these issues and allow this segment of the market to finally benefit from these solutions. And the tablet (and mobile devices in general) will expand where video collaboration beyond the conference to virtually anywhere.
Any other thoughts you’d like to share about the year ahead?
Romano: I think we’ll really see things heat up in the video and unified communications space in 2012. While there has been a lot of talk about disruptive technologies lately, I think we’ll see steady improvements in the quality, price performance and interoperability of video solutions, which will drive adoption across all market segments instead of what has been a predominately large enterprise, conference room-only solution.
To find out more about RADVISION, visit the company at ITEXPO East 2012. To be held Jan. 31- Feb. 3 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, Fla., ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Anatoli Levine, Sr. Director of Product Management at RADVISION, is speaking during “The Realities of Mobile Videoconferencing.” For more information on ITEXPO registration, click here.
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