Last week I saw a press release from Digital Samba, announcing a "triple update" of its OnSync web conferencing product. The press release said Digital Samba released versions 5.0.6, 5.0.7, and 5.0.8 of OnSync in a triple update for customers. A quote from Robert Strobl, the Chief Marketing Officer, said they were proud to present three new versions at once.
As a former product marketing manager in the tech industry, this announcement fascinated and confused me. I couldn't recall seeing a release update phrased this way. I traded emails with Mr. Strobl to get clarification. He told me that it was not a case of three different product releases all coming out at once. It was more a case of one press release serving as a consolidated announcement of updates that had been made over the course of three normally-scheduled software versions.
I checked the release notes page for OnSync and indeed was able to find separate features and fixes for each of the three release numbers. 5.0.6 became available for customers last November. Release 5.0.7 went into production in January, followed by 5.0.8 in February. By the way, I would like to acknowledge the well-organized release notes that Digital Samba makes available. They make it easy to find feature changes applying to in-session activities as opposed to "behind the scenes" account administration and webinar production. They also note Hot Fixes that have been added between releases to the server version of the software in order to quickly fix important issues.
Mr. Strobl mentioned that other vendors who market OnSync as a white-labeled offering under their own product names may choose their own upgrade schedules. Digital Samba sometimes does the same for its own cloud offering to direct customers, skipping a minor release update when it does not consist of much more than Hot Fixes that have already been applied, and choosing to leapfrog later to a version with more significant feature updates.
There are more feature improvements than I can reasonably go into in this post. The press release calls particular attention to telephony integration and in-session interactivity updates, along with high resolution screen sharing. As with just about every vendor, they also are stating their goals of moving to an HTML5/WebRTC platform over 2017 and 2018. One of the things that caught my eye in looking over the release notes were references to different profile languages and time zone conversion features. Digital Samba is one of the few web conferencing manufacturers not based in the USA (they operate primarily out of Spain and Germany, with a strong presence across Europe, North America, South America, and India). Serving multilingual international users is a priority for them, for webinar hosts and attendees alike.
A strong dedication to ongoing development and regular updates is the sign of a healthy technology product and company. I am always happy to see this strength reflected in new product versions with open and well-documented release notes. Keep rolling, Digital Samba!
