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Enterprise Video

CollaborationDavid & Goliath Stories

Cisco vs. Polycom,Pexip and Acano

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Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Ch 1: Polycom 4

Ch 2: Pexip 9

Ch 3: Acano 14

Ch 4: Cisco Fights Back 18

Conclusion 23

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IntroductionWe’ve been watching what’s going on in the collaboration space for quite a while now and we’ve seen our fair share of battles between collaboration technology vendors.

Organizations like Polycom, Cisco, Pexip and Acano, have all thrown a stone or two in the battle for collaboration excellence, but there is an obvious “David & Goliath” pattern that is hard not to notice. Cisco is “Goliath” in every story, but each “David” has a unique way of attacking the big guy. In this ebook, we tell the collaboration industry version of David and Goliath by explaining how each “battle” impacts the workplaces of the future.

Read on to learn how these battles will influence the way you design / build your enterprise video collaboration network.

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Polycom

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Stone #1Remember using Cisco’s software client Cisco Jabber? It’s okay if you don’t. The product represents Cisco’s attempt to compete with the pervasive Microsoft Lync client (now Skype for Business). The product ultimately never really threatened Skype for Business for market dominance. However, it did create a distraction that gave Polycom an important opportunity to sneak up and throw a stone at Goliath (Cisco).

While Cisco was competing with Microsoft’s product for market share in the unified communications space, Polycom partnered with Microsoft and secured a future of integrated products unlike any others in the video collaboration space.

Deep Skype for Business Integration

ContinuedIn 2013, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Lync Room System concept, and four exclusive video conferencing partnerships with vendors including Polycom.

What makes Polycom’s integration with Skype for Business different from others in the space is their native support of Microsoft’s proprietary real-time communication endpoints and RMX bridges, which eliminates the need for 3rd party gateways. Polycom now boasts “direct integration with over 40 voice, video, and content solutions that integrate with Skype for Business, Microsoft Lync, SharePoint, Exchange and Office 365.”

Score 1 for Polycom.

Deep Skype for Business Integration

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Stone #2Polycom, like a number of other video vendors, competes with Cisco for video collaboration endpoint and infrastructure sales. You could say Polycom is to Cisco as Honda is to Mercedes. Mercedes makes very high quality, expensive cars with all of the bells and whistles. Honda competes with Mercedes by selling high quality cars with fewer bells and whistles, at a lower price.

Some might argue that Cisco telepresence delivers the highest quality video collaboration experience (innovators in 1080p and 4K video resolution quality), but bandwidth constraints and high upfront costs are BIG concerns in the enterprise videoconferencing market. Cisco does offer lower budget collaboration options, but Polycom’s RealPresence product line is priced lower with comparable quality making them a highly scalable and cost effective option for enterprise.

Lower Cost / High QualityVideo Technology

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polycom

cisco

Stone #3Polycom has long been a leader in the market for audio conference phones which creates a large upsell opportunity as many organizations look to outfit their huddle rooms with video. In 2015, Polycom launched the RealPresence Trio system to capitalize on this opportunity.

The RealPresence Trio is a room system with powerful three-part collaboration capabilities: voice, video and content - and smooth interoperability with Skype for Business. The hub concept is the first of its kind - a Polycom audio conference phone with visual communication and content sharing capabilities. This could be a game changer for huddle room video deployments.

Conference Room Phones with Video Attachments

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Pexip

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Stone #1Pexip was founded by a group of innovative minds from various backgrounds in video conferencing including organizations like Cisco and Tandberg. Before Pexip, MCUs were expensive and inflexible so organization’s would often over buy or under buy license capacity. So in 2013, the Norwegian video vendor launched a new virtualized collaboration bridge with flexible scalability for large enterprises.

The goal of the product is to provide multiple users across a geographically dispersed organization with personal VMRs that include multi-protocol support (SIP, H.323, Microsoft-SIP, WebRTC, RTMP), desktop client support (Windows, OSX, Linux) and mobile support (iOS and Android).

Introducing Scalability with Software-Based MCU

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ContinuedPexip Infinity has a virtual software architecture that is distributed, so any number of conferencing nodes can be distributed across any number of geographic locations managed by the same single management node. In addition to scalability, an all-software solution reduces the complexity and cost of deployment - another big deal for customers.

“The cost of Infinity will be up to 80% less than the cost of hardware MCUs and Pexip claims that organizations are paying for Infinity about what they would pay for just the annual maintenance on a hardware MCU alone.”

With lower costs and flexible scalability Pexip’s first stone hit Goliath where it hurts!

Source: http://www.nojitter.com/post/240156458/pexip-and-the-infinity-video-mcu

Introducing Scalability with Software Based MCU

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Stone #2At this point, almost all of Cisco’s competitors in the enterprise collaboration space offer interoperability with Skype for Business, but Pexip has a uniquely flexible deployment for single data centers or geographically dispersed S4B deployments.

In the instance of an organization with globally dispersed Skype for Business clients, S4B servers are configured for each location to support dialing out from a conference to a Skype for Business participant. This allows Pexip Infinity to dial out to the server from a Conferencing Node at the most appropriate geographic location, enabling the shortest path and most efficient media routing option.

Flexible Skype for Business Integration

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Stone #3Pexip bridging technology enables lower video collaboration bandwidth costs than Goliath (Cisco). Deployments with a wide geographic dispersion can reduce network bandwidth usage and still keep a high quality audio / visual experience even on multipoint calls. Rather than stacking Pexip VMRs in a single data center, Pexip conference nodes can be distributed as appropriate, so that meetings can be dialed into using the closest available conference node. “Pexip Infinity’s distributed architecture can reduce conference bandwidth usage by up to 90%”

Lower Video Collaboration Bandwidth Costs

Pexip Infinity’s distributed architecture can REDUCE CONFERENCE BANDWIDTH USAGE

byup to90%

Cape Town

New YorkLondon

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acano

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Stone #1From its inception, Acano came out chucking stones at the big guy. The company was founded in 2012 by former C-level execs at Cisco and Tandberg. Acano’s Tandberg heritage brought an exceptional blend of product knowledge as well as a network of channel partners and solid sales teams for its go-to-market strategy.

The first stone thrown came in the form of a product unlike any other at the time. Acano introduced a “persistent meeting room” concept that they called an Acano Cospace. This virtual meeting room blurred the lines of the traditional video conferencing and audio conferencing bridges - designed as a team collaboration space with audio and video capabilities. It isn’t an audio conferencing bridge, video MCU, or web conferencing server, but a combination of all three.

The big guy (Cisco) did not offer any type of virtual bridge hybrid comparable to the Cospace at the time of it’s announcement.

Boom.

The New Persistent Collaboration Meeting Room

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Stone #2Before Acano, IT administrators were frustrated with calls from users about Lync/Skype for Business clients not being able to dial into video conference room bridges and vice versa, but the Cospace changed that. With Acano’s announcement of its “dual home” offering in 2015, the Cospace solution further solidified the integration by bringing together standards-based videoconferencing systems and S4B without any UI user experience changes or reduced functionality for participants using their S4B clients. To this day Cisco does not offer anything close. Acano’s “dual home” technology played a part in turning Cisco’s attention to the UK startup and helped put the official acquisition plans in motion.

Skype for Business Integration

+moreVideo • Audio • Content • IM

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Stone #3The Cospace was originally designed to be a better solution for video conferencing. However, they discovered many organizations used Cospaces for audio conference meetings. The solution has the capacity for up to 10,000 simultaneous audio calls on a single 2U server. According to Wainhouse Research, “By the middle of Y2015, audio represented 5-10% of Acano’s total revenues.”

Radically Lower Audio Conferencing Costs

BY THE MIDDLE OF Y2015, AUDIO REPRESENTED

5 - 10%

OF ACANO’S TOTAL REVENUES

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Ciscofights back

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Boulder #1One of this biggest moves as of late was Cisco’s acquisition of Acano. Cisco has acquired over 12 organizations in the collaboration space in the last ten years, but this one was particularly special for a couple of key reasons:

Acano’s flexible bridge gives Cisco S4B integration (an answer to Polycom and Pexip)

Cisco can leverage Acano’s unique technology advantages (e g , persistent Cospaces, low cost/scalable audio conferencing)

Cisco removed a major disruptor in the collaboration space

The misunderstood beast finally had enough of being pelted with stones, and fought back by throwing a few boulders back at the “would be” Davids.

Cisco Acquires Acano

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Boulder #2Another boulder Cisco is throwing is their new Spark product. The ambitious product is Cisco’s entry into the enterprise cloud audio, video, messaging, persistent meeting room, and the collaboration API markets. Cisco will be competing with many players including Slack, Twilio, and a whole host of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) providers. According to Wainhouse, Cisco’s Rowan Trollope wants to build the best-in-class real time communications platform for the enterprise.

“If you want commodity productivity solutions - email, documents, spreadsheets, online storage - give Microsoft or Google a call. But when you need a real-time communications platform you can count on, come to Cisco. And we’re happy to integrate with other providers’ asynchronous solutions when and where it makes sense.”

Cisco Spark

Source: http://cp.wainhouse.com/blog/2016/03/07/cisco-delivers-spark-messaging-and-calling-plans

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ContinuedCisco is explicitly targeting the enterprise with Spark through its pricing model, history of industry-leading call quality, and an API model to build up an ecosystem of partners. You can bet Cisco will capitalize on its relationships in the enterprise to support Spark’s expansion which will put all of the would be Davids on their heels.

Bam.

Cisco Spark

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Boulder #3Cisco already has 90% of Fortune 500 companies in its WebEx installed base, and continues to improve WebEx’s collaboration capabilities. With CMRs, users can now can easily join WebEx meetings from any standards-based room system. This will be a huge feature as more large organizations begin to video-enable huddle rooms. Even with the growing popularity of Skype for Business in the enterprise WebEx is still relevant and sticky. In a 2015 Wainhouse report, 2H 2015 WebMetrics, 21% of panelists use Skype for Business (or Lync) for their day-to-day web conferencing solution vs. 34% who use WebEx.

Cisco WebEx

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ConclusionThe enterprise video collaboration wars will rage on for many years to come. In this eBook we have not addressed the other Goliath in the space - Microsoft - who will also affect how enterprises optimize their unified collaboration networks. But based on the David and Goliath stories covered in this document we have picked four key trends to keep in mind as you plan and make investments in your network:

Skype for Business (S4B) integration and interoperability is critical to maximize the potential of video collaboration and take advantage of the millions of S4B enabled PCs and devices.

VMRs and team meeting spaces will be key features in a workplace of the future. Vendors that can make meeting in a “video meeting room” as easy as entering a physical conference room will make users happy, more productive, and drive much greater usage.

Technologies with lower video collaboration bandwidth requirements will keep costs under control and improve user experience when network bandwidth is stressed.

Arming huddle and traditional conference rooms with video conferencing endpoints will be the next great innovation to make video collaboration mainstream in the enterprise.

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