Vidtel, a cloud-based video conferencing service provider and CommX, a technologically savvy service provider of hosted telephone systems for businesses, today announced their distribution arrangement to market Vidtel’s hosted Meet Me Video Conferencing Service for multi-party conferencing to CommX’s national customer base of hosted voice business customers.

Many small-to-medium-sized enterprises find business-grade video conferencing highly desirable but also highly challenging to implement. Barriers to implementation include high infrastructure costs, video conferencing expertise and device interoperability issues. CommX and Vidtel have partnered to deliver a hosted solution that even the smallest enterprises will find accessible. Vidtel’s hosted video conferencing service removes IT hassles and expenditures on infrastructure and enables interoperability between 90% of standard video conferencing equipment (e.g., Cisco/Tandberg, Polycom, LifeSize endpoints). With this outsourced solution, SMBs have no need to acquire additional expensive infrastructure to initiate a business-grade on-demand multi-party video conferencing call with third-parties.

“CommX is well-known for moving ahead of the curve on technology evaluations and trends in the hosted VoIP market, and was an early pioneer of VoIP implementations. We are enthusiastic about working with CommX to deliver our service to its national customer base,” said Scott Wharton, CEO of Vidtel.

“The Vidtel hosted service solves a major problem for small to medium-sized businesses who seek business grade, multiple point video calls. This offer radically expands the addressable market for HD video conferencing and it dovetails with our existing hosted voice offers. Vidtel is a leading edge player in this space and we’re excited to be working with them,” said Mike Viren, CommX’s CEO.

The CommX Meet Me Multi-Point Video Conferencing service is live and commercially available through CommX channel partners.

CommX is an early Voice over IP (VoIP) pioneer, founded in 2002 after the core team had performed significant testing/evaluation of numerous early VoIP platforms developed by BroadSoft and other softswitch companies. Funded entirely by its employees, the CommX organization worked hard to build its customer base in the early stages of the VoIP market, focusing on the Tampa Bay and New York City area business community. This disciplined effort provided invaluable experience that would help the company make a strategic move three years later, when it began delivering wholesale VoIP to business partners in other markets. More information is at www.commxinc.com.

Vidtel is a cloud-based video conferencing service provider. Our open video conferencing network service provides compatibility between a diverse set of business-grade video endpoints at enterprises worldwide. Vidtel enables even small and medium enterprises to experience the productivity of secure, high-quality video conferencing with partners, suppliers and customers around the world. Vidtel is located in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, CA. Find more information at http://www.vidtel.com.

Scott Wharton is at BroadSoft Connections October 25-27 at the Arizona Biltmore.  To set up a meeting with him there, contact him at 650-353-1010.

Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, asks Scott Wharton, CEO of Vidtel, about Vidtel’s cloud-based video conferencing service. Scott discusses the vision of the company to provide HD video conferencing for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).

The Vidtel service enables SMEs to have business-grade video conferencing without investing in video conferencing infrastructure (e.g., session border controllers, gateways, SIP proxies).  Vidtel is device-agnostic, enabling any SIP device (e.g., Polycom, Cisco, Tandberg, LifeSize, Sony) to register to and connect with others over the Vidtel network.

Vidtel’s approach is to provide a hosted service, similar to a telephone monthly service fee, eliminating the need for customers to invest in additional IT support, servers, testing and interoperability.

To gain new customers, Vidtel is pursuing a channel strategy with video conferencing vendors, VoIP providers and and VARs.  Vidtel’s service allows VARs and VoIP providers to expand their hosted voice offerings to include hosted video.

In the case of the major video conferencing vendors, Vidtel helps solve the problem of these vendors’ niche focus on the large enterprise. Teaming up with Vidtel enables these manufacturers to address a much wider audience. Without a hosted service such as Vidtel, potential customers would be required to make substantial IT investments to accommodate HD video conferencing.

What’s next? Vidtel has already enabled interoperability between the major players’ equipment (Tandberg, Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize and Sony).  H.323 to SIP  interoperability is next.  Vidtel’s vision also includes gateways from SIP devices to proprietary standards (e.g., Skype, Google, Microsoft, Apple).

See Scott Wharton interviewed on TMCnet.