ViVu has announced that its video collaboration and presentation software now runs on Microsoft Lync (the latest version of Microsoft Office Communicator). This potentially makes the solution more attractive to medium and large enterprises who want to consolidate applications on the Microsoft platform.
The company says that VuRoom Multiparty Videoconferencing for Microsoft Lync lets up to eight participants simultaneously appear on camera in a web conference, using Lync as the underlying transport and communication platform. It also adds desktop sharing, file sharing, and PowerPoint slide display as features in the conference.
I talked to Sudha Valluru, the CEO of ViVu, about the new offering. He said that the functionality is essentially the same as in the version of VuRoom that has been available as a plug-in for Skype, but that enterprises can better control communications security aspects if they are a Microsoft shop, since users don’t have to install Skype or other third-party communication packages.
The announcement is purely about the ability to run on the Lync platform… There is no explicit partnership between Microsoft and ViVu, and licensing the VuRoom software is still direct through ViVu. Since this version is intended for use in managed enterprise scenarios, licensing is typically done via enterprise use agreements up to a certain number of users (for collaboration) or attendance seats (for broadcast events). An IT person would download the VuRoom software and distribute it within the enterprise to be installed on individual user computers as a plug-in for Lync.
I last wrote about ViVu in August. You can read the article by clicking here.
