Wilder In HD

Demo of @LifeSizeHD and @MSFTLync integration #IC12

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 21:23:00 +0000

I don't always like to shamelessly promote my employer on the blog, but I really do think we hit one out of the park today with our announcement of UVC Video Engine for Microsoft Lync.

LifeSize endpoints have long been natively interoperable with OCS and Lync with the ability to click to dial from Lync clients, push presence, and allow Lync clients to dial into the bridges embedded in our room-based systems. Now with our UVC Video Engine, full HD quality is available between Lync and LifeSize.

All that techie stuff is cool, but what I think is really awesome is that when LifeSize announces a product, it is good to go and ready to demo. It's not just marketing hype. If you are a Microsoft partner that wants to offer video to your clients, why look any further? Check out the video below to see what I'm talking about:

UVC Video Center from LifeSize: Enterprise being loaded onto Intrepid

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Great footage of the Space Shuttle Enterprise being loaded onto the USS Intrepid in New York City. LifeSize has been streaming it most of the day from its office near Times Square. If you missed the live stream, check out the recording.

By the way, video made possible by LifeSize's UVC Video Center. :)

Tennesseans warming to telecommute options

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:36:00 +0000

I've been a telecommuter in Tennessee for much of the past four years. For the past two years, video has been readily available and convenient, and it make a great difference. Video helps teleworkers feel more engaged and part of the team and less like an independent contractor. It also enable teleworkers to have many of the same rich and productive interactions with co-workers that they would enjoy in the same room without the inconvenience or expense of driving to the office.

Putting video clients or systems in front of 44 percent of employed adults is a pretty big market to pursue. If you are offering unified communications or IT services and not including video, you are missing a huge opportunity.

Tennesseans warming to telecommute options: Employers looking to boost morale at the office, hear this: workers want a telecommute option.

According to survey results released by Connected Tennessee, 44 percent of employed adults say they either telework now or would be willing to if given the opportunity. This represents 1.18 million employed Tennesseans.

The report also found that the typical Nashville employee spends more than 280 hours commuting per year, which equates to more time spent each year getting to the office than on vacation...

Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet | TechCrunch

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:27:00 +0000

I don't know if I'll be chatting it up with strangers via Airtime, but it's a step in the right direction for video adoption. As the technology continues to become ubiquitous in the consumer space, it will be in demand by end-users in the corporate world even more.

Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet | TechCrunch

LifeSize Clearsea wins 2012 Unified Communications TMC Labs Innovation Award

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:24:00 +0000

Check out the great news about LifeSize!

2012 Unified Communications TMC Labs Innovation Award Winners Announced

Unified Communications: An Integrator’s Dream | Channelnomics

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Larry Walsh at Channelnomics really hit the nail on the head with this post (linked below). So much that it inspired me to wake up my mostly dormant blog. :)

Unified Communications is not a product but a solution to a business problem developed by a capable integrator. Rather than picking a single manufacturer to provide for every aspect of UC (voice, video, IM, etc.), VARs should select the best fit for the customer in each category and bring them on together on a manageable platform.

Unified Communications: An Integrator’s Dream | Channelnomics

From The VAR Guy: Juniper Rebrands Channel Program Juniper Partner Advantage

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:22:00 +0000

I really admire what I'm hearing about Juniper, and it's revamped channel program. Rather than just pushing their products and certifications down their VARs' throats, they appear to genuinely want to help them develop their businesses and help with their overall success. Juniper appears to be behaving more like a partner than a vendor.

Juniper Rebrands Channel Program Juniper Partner Advantage:

I’m at the first-ever Juniper Networks Global Partner Conference here at the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where the networking company is laying out its channel strategies for the next year. The biggest announcement: the rebranding of the company’s partner play to the Juniper Partner Advantage program, a so-called “pivoting” of its channel strategy aimed at helping VARs stay relevant in a changing market.

Juniper’s Partner Advantage program has three pillars:

Reach – Juniper’s channel team will be helping partners master the skills required for the so-called “new network” — the company’s name for the new market created by enhanced mobility, the cloud and other modern IT trends. That includes sales and technical education through Juniper’s Learning Academy portal, new accreditations and hands-on training.

Accelerate – Juniper plans on enhancing its ability to generate leads for partners, generate marketing collateral and communicate with its VAR base. And as a nice side-benefit to that, the second quarter of this year will see the launch of the Partner Enablement App for the iPad.

Reward - Probably the biggest new feature of this part of Partner Advantage is the introduction of deal registration. But it also includes a revamped reward schedule for partners, new catalogs, back-end rebates and more.

I spoke to Juniper VP of Worldwide Channel Development and Programs Steve Pataky here at the conference, who noted this complete rebranding has been in the works for months. Between the rise of the cloud, the boost in mobility and BYOD and so on, partners really need to develop their skills and their sales pitch if they’re going to stay relevant. Juniper wants to be the company that helps them get there, he said.

“The market trends are real — customers have to figure this out,” Pataky said.

Interestingly, Pataky noted these changes don’t signify a major channel recruitment drive. One statistic mentioned a lot at the conference is Juniper’s partner program has “only” grown 10 percent since last year — but business has accelerated out of that proportion. Of course, no one mentioned Juniper’s profit warning, and I didn’t get a chance to chat with anyone who could discuss it authoritatively.

Pataky said that statistic backs up the notion that Partner Advantage is the deepest investment into its channel strategy since the launch of the original Juniper Networks Partner Program. Every aspect of the channel was examined (and changed if it was felt to be lacking). Fewer partners doing more sales across various vertical segments is preferable to a market flooded with Juniper partners fighting each other for deals.

I’m hoping for more perspective on Partner Accelerate before I hop my plane back to California tomorrow, so stay tuned.

LifeSize Tweetup showcases use of social media and video collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:41:00 +0000

LifeSize hosted a Tweetup today to field questions about its new Connections product. The audience submitted questions via Twitter using the hashtag #AskLifeSize, and the questions were answered on a live video stream via LifeSize Video Center. Excellent use case for both social media and video collaboration. Click the link below to check it out.

LifeSize Social Media

Five Steps to Overcoming SMB Objections in the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:12:00 +0000

Nice post on The VAR Guy about how to position the cloud to SMB clients. It reminds me of the long road to widespread adoption of voice over IP. It didn't really take off until we stopped talking about the technology and started talking more about the benefits. The same goes with video. It's not about 1080p or 60 frames per second. It's about richer collaboration and ROI.

Five Steps to Overcoming SMB Objections in the Cloud:

As a VAR, you know it makes sense to offer cloud-based services to your small and mid-sized business (SMB) clients. The cloud allows you to provide SMBs with enterprise-like features that are easy to implement and use, without large upfront capital expenses or huge monthly fees, while simultaneously adding recurring revenue for your own business. Yet you’re likely coming across multiple obstacles, including SMBs’ lack of understanding about cloud services or general inertia toward change. Here are five steps to overcoming common SMB objections to the cloud.

They include:

1. Don’t Overhype the Cloud. Cloud may be the latest buzzword and technology trend, but some SMBs are wary or may not be ready for it. If you go in trying to sell the cloud, a client may be put off immediately. And it’s understandable, since the cloud itself is not really what people want – it’s the value that the cloud brings that will get their attention.

2. Choose Your Battles. Don’t try to move a client’s entire business to the cloud at once. When you’re trying to get someone to change behavior, you start with something small. If someone asks for advice on getting in shape, for instance, you might suggest beginning with three 30 minute workouts a week; if you tell them to train four hours a day, seven days a week, they’ll never start. It’s a general rule about life that if you want people to say yes, you make it simple for them to do so. Limit your initial recommendations to make it easy for a SMB to adopt the cloud, and build from there. If you come on too strong at first, a client might back off completely.

3. Address a Real Pain. There are many ways the cloud is beneficial for SMBs – efficiency, scalability, high elasticity, etc. But focus on benefits that resolve the strongest pain points for your client. For example, data backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery is an area where a cloud solution can really make a difference for SMBs, since it replaces multiple software solutions with one web-based service.

4. Establish a Clear ROI. A common mistake of vendors selling cloud computing is to focus on getting clients to implement the latest technology without clear examples of what it can really do for the business. Focus on selling value first, putting the methodology second. Show the real dollars they can save each month and provide compelling use cases.

5. Offer More than Cost Savings. Remember that value encompasses much more than cost savings. To convince someone to make a change based on cost savings alone, the solution has to be massively less expensive, or many SMBs won’t want to bother. But if there’s additional value like greater peace of mind, employee happiness, or customer satisfaction, that intrinsic value plus cost savings combines to make a compelling argument.

There’s no doubt that SMBs are moving to the cloud, especially for applications in finance, data storage, CRM, and HR, as well as collaboration tools. While only 3% of businesses in 2011 had more than 50% of their infrastructure and applications in the cloud, by 2015 an estimated 46% will have at least half cloud infrastructure and applications, according to Gartner.

By focusing on your customers’ real needs and pain points – as well as the real value of the cloud solutions you’re offering – you can cement your relationships now and be the one your customers turn to as their demand for cloud solutions inevitably grows.

Justin Moore is CEO of Axcient, which works closely with VARs and MSPs. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual platinum sponsorship.

WilderInHD on LifeSize Corporate Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:17:00 +0000

I was honored today with a guest post on LifeSize's corporate blog at VideoConferencingSpot.com. Check it out: http://www.lifesize.com/videoconferencingspot.com/?p=3250

For Telecommuters (which means everyone): No VPN? No problem for LifeSize

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:17:00 +0000

Great feature about how we are all telecommuters now. Whether we go to a physical office or not, many of us do a lot of work from home or while mobile and use devices that would have been banned by IT just a few years ago.

The article also discusses how VPN connections are starting to go out of fashion. One challenge not having a VPN connection presents is the ability to communicate via video back to the home office. Very few companies are comfortable with forwarding ports to permit video traffic to traverse their firewall. Fortunately, LifeSize has two great solutions to meet this need--LifeSize Transit and our new Connections service.

\Transit is a firewall traversal server, installed on the network as a physical appliance or VMWare, that can permit video connections without the need for VPN for port forwarding. Connections provides this functionality, and much more, as a subscription to LifeSize's cloud service.

Feature: Die, VPN! We're all "telecommuters" now—and IT must adjust:

Once upon a time, "telecommuter" was easy to define: it was anyone who wasn't working where everyone else was, but who still needed all that network access. In general, the setup was simple—provide e-mail and a VPN—and it was also centralized. IT issued you a laptop. IT set up your VPN access. If your company was all bleeding edge and had a BlackBerry Server, IT issued you a BlackBerry. The VPN software slowed all but the fastest pipes to a crawl, which was okay, because 99 percent of your work under that setup was e-mailing Microsoft Office documents around the office. Even a BlackBerry could handle that.

No one really liked this approach, buy users didn't want to suggest using their own stuff instead. Setting up e-mail on non-BlackBerrys was a tedious procedure, and no phone browser could even begin to handle webmail at a level anyone would want to use, even if the screens could have handled it. And IT departments hated these kinds of requests. Really. I've been doing telecommuting setups in various ways since the early/mid '90s. It sucked for IT as much as—if not more than—it did for the users.

The result was a centralized, highly regulated, overcontrolled mess that everyone wanted to work, but there was no real impetus to make it happen on any level other than "gosh, wouldn't it be great if we could..."

Read the comments on this post

How technology is changing business [Infographic] — Tech News and Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:07:00 +0000

Cool infographic posted on GigaOM (linked below) illustrating the rate of change and how businesses are responding. In general, they are not keeping up.

The good news for VARs is that communication technology represents the best opportunity for the enterprise to improve its ability to respond and land new customers. At LifeSize, we feel that Universal video collaboration will be front and center in meeting the challenge.

How technology is changing business [Infographic] — Tech News and Analysis

Top Ten Reasons to Partner with LifeSize

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:54:00 +0000

I try to keep my blog mostly neutral. I figure that if people who read the blog value the content and agree with my take on certain topics, they will figure out where I work (just look in the column to the right) and want to do business with me. Besides, no one likes to feel like their constantly being pitched.

Every now and then, though, I can't help but brag about the work we are doing at LifeSize. Last week marked my one year anniversary, and it's been a dream job so far. We're known for our best of breed HD video technology, but we're also working really hard to design the ideal channel partner program to attract top value added resellers (VARs). I think we are on the right track but check out the video below and let me know what you think.

By the way, this post shows off a very unique application that is available through our VARs--LifeSize Video Center. I recorded this video from a Team 220 codec in my home office in Nashville, streaming over the internet to our Video Center appliance at the corporate headquarters in Austin. I can either offer the content as a link for someone to stream (kinda like You Tube), embed into a web page (like I did today), or upload it and do whatever I want. I could also live stream to up to 1,000 viewers at a time. Now if we could just make my face look at little less dumb in the screen cap before you play the video, the technology would be perfect!

No Jitter | blog | Prospects for Mobile Video Conferencing

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:18:00 +0000

It's been a great week over at No Jitter with several posts that have caught my eye, including one today about the projected growth of mobile video conferencing.

Mobile video capability is one component of LifeSize's vision of Universal Video Collaboration. To address this market, we recently acquired a company called Mirial. Mirial offers standards based video calling on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. Not only do their solutions work within the LifeSize product line, but they can also communicate with any other standards-based systems.

If mobile video is something you are interesting in implementing in your organization or offering your customers, you should give it a look: http://www.lifesize.com/Products/Infrastructure/ClearSea.aspx

No Jitter | blog | Prospects for Mobile Video Conferencing

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Eight, Nine, and Ten

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:08:00 +0000

Value added resellers (VARs) continuously evaluate manufacturers to determine if new products would be a good fit for their portfolio. The challenge is that it can be difficult to differentiate competing manufacturers at face value. The series "Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers" provides a framework outside of product features and functions to assist in making an informed decision.

Part Eight--Channel Partnership Philosophy. The manufacturer should be all channel or all direct. VARs are almost constantly frustrated by manufacturers who try to do both. In the worst case scenarios, manufacturers will even compete with their own channel partners on larger opportunities. If at all possible, VARs should seek partnerships with manufacturers who are 100% committed to the channel with no direct salesforce. In addition, the manufacturer should be committed to channel development. Providing a price list and brochures and only engaging when a sales opportunity is on the line isn't good enough. A successful partnership requires a tight engagement beyond access to information and transactions. The best manufacturers will seek to help their partners become successful via join marketing initiatives as well as adequate training to help their VARs become self-sufficient. VARs should also seek partnerships with manufacturers committed to a low density channel. While most manufacturers won't commit to an exclusive territory for a VAR, they should at least commit to not oversubscribing. VARs should partner with manufacturers who are interested in developing strategic partnerships with companies that meet their geographic coverage needs or offer a unique value proposition. Manufacturers who appear to be over-saturating the market should be avoided.

Part Nine--Excellent Margins. It almost goes without saying that VARs should be interested in partnering with manufacturers that can offer them excellent profit margins. They shouldn't confuse margin with discount, though. Discount is the percentage that a manufacturer will provide the VAR from their list price. Margin is the profit that a VAR can make selling the manufacturer's products at a price that the market will bear. VARs should research at how close to list price they can reasonable expect to sell to their customers. Many manufacturers will offer deep discounts, but their list prices are inflated to the point that the VAR cannot reasonably to sell at list. Other manufacturers will offer list prices at market competitive rates and offer VARs a discount that is more in line with the margins they can expect. Many VARs feel that the latter scenario makes it easier to discuss pricing with their customers as well as more accurately forecast profits.

Part Ten--Extensive Sales and Technical Support. VARs should partner with manufacturers that provide extensive sales and technical support. The best manufacturers will offer field resources within driving distance of their partners. These sales resources will be in continuous contact with their partners to help drive sales opportunities, participate in marketing activities, and provide ongoing training. In addition, the manufacturer should be readily available to assist should any technical challenges arise. For mission critical applications, 24X7 tech support is the minimum requirement. In short, VARs should never feel that they are on their own. The manufacturer should be a safety net for the VAR not only to protect their relationship with the channel but also to protect the integrity of their brand.

Related Posts:
Ten Criteria Parts One and Two
Ten Criteria Parts Three and Four
Ten Criteria Parts Five, Six, and Seven

No Jitter | blog | Social Personas Matter

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

I couldn't help but comment on a post on No Jitter today (linked below) and thought I would expand upon my thoughts here.

Do you think it's necessary to have multiple social media personas? Do you share information on Facebook or Twitter that you wouldn't want your parents and/or children to see? Will the ability to choose to what friends to share status updates change what you post?

My policy has long been not to post things on social media that I wouldn't want my mom, wife, kid, boss to see. I don't think that will change because I can now pick and choose who gets to see what. First of all, I don't trust that the information will only be disseminated to that small group. Can I really be sure that it won't be available via search results or other methods? Secondly, I don't trust myself to be able to use it correctly. Lastly, I really don't have all that much to hide anyway. I guess when you get a little older, you learn to accept that not everyone is going to "get you," so you should just be yourself and focus on the ones that do.

I do have multiple personas on Twitter--@seanwilder is my personal handle and @WilderInHD is my professional. The separation is intended not to bore the audience, though, not to hide anything. As much as I've tried, most of my friends and family have no interest in HD video collaboration or channel development, so I keep that stuff off their radar. Similarly, I doubt that most of my business associates care about my fantasy football team or where I had a burger last night.

No Jitter | blog | Social Personas Matter

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Five, Six, and Seven

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:06:00 +0000

Value added resellers (VARs) continuously evaluate manufacturers to determine if new products would be a good fit for their portfolio. The challenge is that it can be difficult to differentiate competing manufacturers at face value. The series "Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers" provides a framework outside of product features and functions to assist in making an informed decision.

Part Five--Enterprise Class, IT friendly. VARs should offer products that provide enterprise class features but are also "IT friendly." IT friendly doesn't just mean easy to install and maintain. Those benefits should be the price of admission for any technology. The solution should also be bandwidth efficient and network agnostic. While network upgrades can provide additional revenue and upsell opportunities to the VAR, they can also represent hurdles to project approval. It is much easier for a VAR to offer a solution that can be implemented on the network that their customer has in place today.

Part Six--Low Total Cost of Ownership. Nearly every manufacturer will tout their products' low total cost of owner (TCO); however, most VARs are beginning to take the cynical view of "low TCO" as code for high upfront cost. VARs should seek manufacturers who not only offer products with lower maintenance and support costs but also a very competitive upfront price. Businesses today are managing their budgets on a quarterly basis. While TCO is important, it is a tough sell if the upfront cost is out of budget range. VARs should also pay attention to Part Five when assessing a product's TCO. Required network and/or bandwidth upgrades should not be forgotten in the TCO assessment.

Part Seven--Fast Growing but Stable. VARs should seek manufacturer partners that are fast growing but also stable. What is the manufacturer's growth rate compared to the industry average? How many employees have been added in the past year? On the other hand, VARs should be wary of up and coming companies that appear to be acquisition bait. Many of these new companies may be worth exploring, especially if the VAR gets in on the ground floor of an exciting new technology. In some cases, the partnership may even improve or expand post-acquisition. Unfortunately, there are probably more negative experiences from VARs when one of their partners gets acquired than positive. If possible, VARs should partner with manufacturers after the big acquisition has already occurred.

Stay tuned for future posts until all ten criteria are covered. In the mean time, feel free to share your experiences and feedback in the comments section.

Related Posts:

Ten Criteria Parts One and Two
Ten Criteria Parts Three and Four

Study: Telecommuting is worth a pay cut, especially for men — Online Collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Telecommuting is an all around win for employers. They can save money on office space and, as this study shared on GigaOm illustrates, even pay workers a little less. Don't forget about the environmental impact of taking all of those commuters off the road. In fact, telecommuting is so obviously beneficial that it surprises me when I hear about knowledge workers who are required to report to an office.

Many businesses may be concerned that productivity and accountability can wane in this type of environment. Equipping telecommuters with video collaboration is the solution to these concerns. The ability to communicate via video at any time will ensure that employees are working during designated times. Face to face communication via video also helps employees feel more engaged and less isolated.

Video solutions are now available to fit any type work environment from the corporate board down to the mobile device. The average telecommuter can be equipped with HD video for less than $1,000 per end-user which could easily be funded by the six to ten percent less that workers are willing to accept for a flexible work environment.

Study: Telecommuting is worth a pay cut, especially for men — Online Collaboration

No Jitter | blog | The UC Virtualization Train Leaves the Station

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Interesting post in No Jitter about more and more unified communications applications being offered as virtual. LifeSize is also on that train. Our Transit firewall traversal server is available as VM as well as Mirial ClearSea. Stay tuned for more.

No Jitter | blog | The UC Virtualization Train Leaves the Station

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Three and Four

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:36:00 +0000

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers: Parts One and Two

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:10:00 +0000

Part One--Strategic Vision for the Future. Is the manufacturer's vision to "gain market share on Cisco and become a billion dollar company" or is it to "promote universal video collaboration so that making a video call is as easy as picking up the phone"? The best companies will share a vision for the future that has very little to do with competitors or even financial results. While profit gains and vanquished foes may appeal to the manufacturer internally, those initiatives will do little to inspire the VAR's team and almost nothing to encourage their customers to buy. Truly inspiring companies seek to change the technology landscape for the better and place end-user needs at the core of its offerings, not just beat up on the other guys. Everyone in the manufacturer's organization should be able to articulate the company's vision, and it should sound roughly the same each time. If a different story is presented depending on the speaker, it's a pretty strong indicator that not everyone at the manufacturer is on the same page.

Part Two--Complete Product Line. Businesses want to purchase from companies that offer a complete end-to-end solution. Mixing several components from different manufacturers can lead to finger-pointing and a lack of accountability, placing the VAR and the customer squarely in the middle should a problem occur. While VARs can add a lot of value by integrating solutions from various manufacturers when necessary, they should also seek to offer an end-to-end solution from a single source whenever possible and feasible. Selecting to represent a manufacturer that offers a complete solution, rather than only a single component, can make the VAR's and the customer's lives much easier. VARs should beware of manufacturers who promise, or even require, too much, though. The complete solution should be offered within the manufacturer's scope of expertise. For example, at LifeSize, we offer a complete video solution (endpoints + infrastructure + applications), but we would rather be interoperable with the major unified communications (UC) platforms that exist today rather than move outside of our scope to build our own.

Stay tuned for future posts until all ten criteria are covered. In the mean time, feel free to share your experiences and feedback in the comments section.

Blogger Gets Faster & Better Looking

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:01:00 +0000

Perfect timing just as I'm about to re-open my blog. I wish I could say that it's been the interface that has prevented me from posting more, but it's really just not making it a priority. That's all going to change in September, though. :)

Blogger Gets Faster & Better Looking

HD Video collaboration answers the challenge of a distributed workforce

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:17:00 +0000

I noticed an interview on GigaOm (linked below) that discusses the trend of corporations offering flexible work environments for its employees. This trend not only has a positive affect on employee morale and the environment, but also produces a positive impact on a company's bottom line.

One challenge to creating a distributed workforce is to try to duplicate the level of collaboration and engagement that can be achieved with everyone under one roof. While flexible work environments are very promising, there still is really nothing better than meeting face-to-face (vs. phone, IM, and email). HD Video Conferencing is as close as you can get to the real thing. With HD video, employees feel more engaged with their company and collaboration with peers is much more effective. In short, video collaboration allows companies to reap the benefits of a distributed workforce without the trade-offs.

BTW...one of the interviewees in the article was from Regus. LifeSize recently struck a deal to provide our HD video conferencing solutions to several Regus locations nationwide. If you manage a company with a distributed workforce that is in need of office space for remote employees or "third space" for collaboration, you will reap the benefits of the best video conferencing in the industry by going with Regus.

Is the Traditional Office Becoming Extinct? : Online Collaboration «

Corporate Synergy: LifeSize Video Center with Logitech Revue

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:21:00 +0000

Today at LifeSize, we held a session on Telehealth that was streamed to hundreds of participants via our Video Center platform. Video Center allows each participant to see not only the presentation but also the speaker via any web browser. Sessions can also be recorded and published instantly for viewing at a later date.

I decided to use the Chrome browser on my Logitech Revue (aka Google TV) to watch the presentation on my HDTV rather than my laptop. It worked great, and I thought it was pretty cool to use both products together.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Logitech Revue with Google TV - Kevin Bacon

noreply@blogger.com (Sean Wilder) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:10:00 +0000

Logitech is a pretty cool company and seems to be a good fit with LifeSize. I bought three Logitech Revues with Google TV to give away as Christmas gifts. I've been playing around with one at home for a couple of days and have really enjoyed it. I'm sure it's only going to keep getting better as more apps become available.

Wilder In HD

Demo of @LifeSizeHD and @MSFTLync integration #IC12

UVC Video Center from LifeSize: Enterprise being loaded onto Intrepid

Tennesseans warming to telecommute options

Face To Face: How Airtime Will Re-Humanize The Internet | TechCrunch

LifeSize Clearsea wins 2012 Unified Communications TMC Labs Innovation Award

Unified Communications: An Integrator’s Dream | Channelnomics

From The VAR Guy: Juniper Rebrands Channel Program Juniper Partner Advantage

Read More About This Topic

LifeSize Tweetup showcases use of social media and video collaboration

Five Steps to Overcoming SMB Objections in the Cloud

Read More About This Topic

WilderInHD on LifeSize Corporate Blog

For Telecommuters (which means everyone): No VPN? No problem for LifeSize

How technology is changing business [Infographic] — Tech News and Analysis

Top Ten Reasons to Partner with LifeSize

No Jitter | blog | Prospects for Mobile Video Conferencing

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Eight, Nine, and Ten

No Jitter | blog | Social Personas Matter

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Five, Six, and Seven

Study: Telecommuting is worth a pay cut, especially for men — Online Collaboration

No Jitter | blog | The UC Virtualization Train Leaves the Station

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers--Parts Three and Four

Ten Criteria for VARs to Evaluate Manufacturers: Parts One and Two

Blogger Gets Faster & Better Looking

HD Video collaboration answers the challenge of a distributed workforce

Corporate Synergy: LifeSize Video Center with Logitech Revue

Logitech Revue with Google TV - Kevin Bacon