VCON launches videoconferencing apps

(Telephony) Video-over-IP networks vendor VCON has introduced a suite of applications that it hopes will boost IP videoconferencing by providing telephone-like features and allowing users to centrally manage and administer the video IP network, said Gordon Daugherty, VCON's senior vice president of global marketing.

"We've shattered a lot of the barriers to large scale deployment. What was still missing was if you're an enterprise or service provider looking to deliver a managed video service, you're not going to do that in the thousands or tens of thousands of units if you can't centrally manage the network," he said.

VCON's applications make it possible to "configure the devices (and) decide the security and policy … from a console," Daugherty said.

Making the service resemble a telephone, he said, should spur wider deployment of videoconferencing.

"We designed our videoconference appliance as an external appliance that plugs into the (computer) USB port and sits on the desk. We put buttons on it for muting the audio, changing the volume, placing a call, hanging up a call," Daugherty explained.

These features, generally taken for granted on the telephone, don't exist with video telephony, he said, adding that the end device will not be a new version of the tried-and-failed videophone.

"When you say videophone what I think of is a device that sits on the desk that's a fully embedded appliance that has a screen and a handset," he said. "I'm separating the physical device that invokes the functionality. The Media Xchange Manager is offering video telephony services like a PBX. I'm going to leverage that valuable real estate you have in a VGA monitor and use that for my videoconferencing system."

While end users will primarily be business customers, Daugherty did see an eventual audience of high bandwidth data subscribers – DSL, cable or broadband wireless – who would be willing to pay extra to get video as well as voice and data.

"It clearly applies to the service provider market," he said. "These service providers want to move up the food chain and move out of the commodity bandwidth and general access business and start delivering applications they can charge more money for on that same infrastructure."