Business Info - issue 141

businessinfomag.uk magazine 34 COLLABORATION ...continued much of its investment. “Ease of use has always been something we have prided ourselves on. The more people use a technology, the more ease of use is critical because there is a limit to how much support and IT training an organisation can provide. Things need to be intuitive for users, whether they are on a laptop, mobile phone or in a meeting room, and consistent. That is where, I think, we stand apart,” he said. “Generally, we are replacing something organisations already have. Most have 3 or 4 different web and video communication tools; these will have pockets of acceptance but overall there won’t be a tremendously satisfied user community, because the technology they might have bought several years ago will be difficult, low quality or not truly user-centric. The reason people use video is because it is a better experience, it makes people more effective over distance and to do that it has to be compelling. If our solution was only marginally better than what people had before, there would be no reason to purchase or use it. “We invest a tremendous amount to provide the highest quality service, the highest quality experience possible.We are delivering a 4K end-to-end video content network today and we are the only ones to do that,” he said. Complete saturation Creating a system that more people want to use more often raises additional challenges, notably how easy it is to scale as usage within a business grows. This, says Helmbrecht, is another area where Lifesize’s cloud-connected approach gives it an edge over the competition. “Generally, what we are trying to do is give organisations a viable solution that is compelling for every one of their employees and every one of their meeting spaces, where it is cost-effective and engaging, not just for internal communications but also for interacting with customers and partners and suppliers,” he said. “Before, customers would pre- purchase a certain model, licensing and equipment and stay within that footprint and not scale very much, or they would do it in very long cycles. Today, customers are expanding their footprint towards complete saturation, and that is a change.We have customers where every single employee has access to Lifesize and, with that, usage continues to compound. It’s becoming the default technology that businesses use to communicate, not only internally but externally. It is starting to replace not just the web conferencing workflow but phone calls and audio conferences as well.” Already, Lifesize runs billions of minutes of service, with very many of its customers logging 200,000+ minutes of usage a month, driven in part by the easy integration of Lifesize with tools that office workers use every day. “If a customer is a Microsoft Office 365 shop, we will tie into Azure Active Directory for single sign-on and authentication; we will tie into their calendaring so they can book meetings through Outlook. The same thing for G suite and Google or Slack and other technologies. It’s a very familiar workflow,” explained Helmbrecht. “I can schedule meetings in a meeting room or on my phone or on a laptop and it will alert me when the meeting is about to begin. Even large group sessions are extremely lightweight and easy to schedule and participate in and that makes a huge difference because it takes away the learning curve.” Browser native Helmbrecht says the free Lifesize GO service will give even more people the opportunity to experience the benefits of Lifesize collaboration and conferencing. “GO is a way for people and teams that may not be using Lifesize today, or video at all, to get a professional secure video experience that they can use on any device without installing software. It is completely browser native, whether on your iPhone, your Android tablet/ phone, your PC or your Mac. You just click a link and join a meeting, with video and content and audio all securely encrypted. It is a way for us to show what’s possible.” Helmbrecht adds that GO’s ability to work natively in a browser on any device is indicative of how the paid for Lifesize service is likely to evolve in the future. “Our fully featured paid offering is rapidly moving in the same direction, with everything able to take place in the browser. In the coming weeks and months, more and more functionality will move in that direction, so you won’t necessarily need downloadable applications unless you want them. We have done that extensively today with the Chrome browser. It makes an enormous difference for customers’ guests who can click a link and be in a video call with a very high quality experience.We are going to extend that to everything – to Microsoft Edge, to Safari, to Firefox.We are already showing that with GO. It’s a way to give people an experience they might not have had but also to show where we are taking the technology.” He added: “There will always be downloadable applications that customers have internally, particularly for recurring power users. But for that occasional or first-time user, we think making it a simple browser experience, using whatever is native to the device, whether that is a tablet or smartphone or PC or Mac, will remove the greatest barrier to adoption, while remaining interoperable with videoconferencing systems and phone calls and everything else.We are working right now to expand that from the freemium offering to the full paid offering, from GO to everything.”