Google has entered the cloud-based video conferencing market with the release of the Chromebox for Meetings, billed as a low-cost, easy-to-use device for holding business meetings in any room.
The wireless device, introduced Thursday, comes with everything but a display for holding meetings of up to 15 people on laptops, smartphones or tablets.
People who prefer phones can dial into a meeting through UberConference, while those with traditional web based video conferencing systems need to have a separate tool sold by Vidyo.
Chromebox, which will compete with products from Cisco Systems and Polycom, costs $999 and comes with a high-definition camera, a microphone and speaker unit and a remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard. The device itself has four USB ports and is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor.
After the first year, buyers pay $250 annually for use of the service, which utilizes Google+ Hangouts and Google apps, such as Calendar for scheduling meetings and Gmail for people who join without a Chromebox. Dell, Hewlett-Packard and ASUSTek will sell Chromebox. It will also be available through resellers CDW and SYNNEX.
The device will be sold first in the U.S. and in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, and the U.K. later this year. "We are excited to be working closely with Google on such an innovative solution that gives professionals the opportunity to connect, collaborate and meet face-to-face no matter where they are," Neil Hand, vice president and general manager for the Dell Tablet Group, said in a statement.
Companies that tested Chromebox before the launch included Eventbrite, Gilt, oDesk and Woolworths Limited. Google's interest in online meeting software started with its development of Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC), a technology the company open sourced in 2011.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are standardizing WebRTC. The technology is considered a disruptor in the web conferencing software market because it enables inexpensive browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat and peer-to-peer file sharing without plugins.
Advance implementations of the technology are in the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. Video conferencing server is a key component of corporate strategies for Web-based collaboration. However, the market has stalled as companies decide whether to take advantage of inexpensive software options or cloud services, according to market researcher IDC.
"We are definitely starting to see the impact of lower-cost video systems and more software-centric products and offerings on the enterprise video equipment market," Rich Costello, analyst for IDC, said in a statement. Overall mutlipoint video conferencing equipment revenue fell almost 10 percent year to year in the third quarter of 2013 to $576 million, IDC reported.
Article Source: Google takes on Cisco In video conferencing market
That's a great start as the Video conferencing software is going to rule the future world. There are going to be some high demands for such a software which can virtually connect the world through a medium which is a need for every business these days.
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