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Volume 15 Issue #19 08-October-14
News & Views
on Unified Communications & Collaboration
Qumu Acquires Kulu Valley
Steve Vonder Haar, svonder@wainhouse.com
Enterprise streaming platform developer Qumu this
week acquired Kulu Valley in a stock-and-cash deal
valued at $15 million. Kulu Valley’s 36 employees will
be absorbed into Qumu’s operations and elements
of the Kulu Valley solution will be integrated into the
Qumu platform. Qumu also will sell a hosted version
of the existing Kulu Valley solution, which will be renamed Qumu Cloud.
The Kulu Valley team will continue to work out of its
London office, helping Qumu expand its footprint in
the European market. Kulu Valley now has 80 corporate
customers for its streaming solutions, with about
two-thirds of its revenue coming from organizations
based in Europe. In the year ending June 30, 2014, Kulu
Valley generated $5.5 million in revenue. In each of the
past two years, Kulu Valley has expanded what it calls
“recurring revenue” at a compounded annual growth
rate exceeding 50%.
Even without the addition of Kulu Valley, Qumu is
projecting that year-over-year revenues will grow 30%
in 2014 over prior year levels. The company also expects
its backlog of customer commitments for future
software license payments to increase by the end of
2014 to levels 50% higher than in 2013.
Counting revenues from Kulu Valley, Qumu projects
that 2015 revenue totals will increase by 60% in 2015
over 2014 levels. Qumu also projects that Kulu Valley
will be cash flow accretive to 2015 results and that the
combined company will
reach cash flow break
Qumu’s Kulu Valley
even in 2016. Qumu
acquisition is a bold
expects its cash reserves
stroke that runs
to stand at between $30
somewhat counter to
million and $35 million
recent deal-making in
the enterprise streaming at the end of 2014 and
between $20 million
segment.
and $25 million by the
end of 2015. In other
Qumu news, the company announced last week the
availability of its fully updated Qumu Mobile App 2.0.
Version 2.0, available for iOS, Android, and Windows
devices, features an enhanced user experience
encompassing numerous social elements related to
video collaboration and communication.
What Steve thinks: Qumu’s Kulu Valley acquisition is a
bold stroke that runs somewhat counter to recent dealmaking in the enterprise streaming segment. The past
quarter has featured a series of transactions in which
established technology vendors invested to establish a
foothold in the growing market for streaming solutions.
In July, Avaya purchased BurstPoint. August brought
PAGE 1
Telstra’s acquisition of Ooyala. And, in September, PGi
established streaming critical mass with the purchase
of TalkPoint. Each deal served as a type of streaming
market validation, illustrating that large companies
with an established presence in adjacent technology
market segments see value in adding streaming
capabilities to their broader product portfolio.
The Qumu / Kulu Valley deal tells a very different story.
It’s a simple declaration by Qumu that enterprise
streaming platforms still matter as stand-alone
solutions and that a handful of vendors can still focus
exclusively on developing end-to-end ecosystems
specifically designed to address enterprise streaming
issues. On paper, the product strengths of Qumu and
Kulu Valley are a good fit for one another. Qumu is best
known for core video content management capabilities
and network administration features. Kulu Valley is
strong in areas more visible to end users — most
notably in content creation capabilities.
The onus is now on Qumu to blend the strengths of
the solutions of the two companies into a seamless
integrated platform solution. Such acquisition-driven
product integration is more difficult than it sounds and
will not be instantaneous.
While Qumu can immediately sell Kulu Valley’s hosted
solution as a stand-alone service called Qumu Cloud,
the ultimate success of Qumu’s acquisition will be
determined by the speed with which it can deliver full
Kulu Valley feature integration into its existing product
line. Kulu Valley has a strong reputation for its embrace
of open application programming interfaces — a
foundation that could accelerate feature integration for
Qumu. Nevertheless, the devil always is in the details.
Will Qumu recognize the full fruits of the Kulu Valley
acquisition in months or years? Impossible to predict
now, but the clock is ticking.
incremental product improvements. Harvard Business
School professor Clayton Christensen discussed his
theories of disruptive innovation in a Tuesday keynote,
covering the groundswell of terms he says did not exist
ten year ago: social media, smartphone, apps, Wi-Fi,
Twitter, MOOC, WiKi, 3D printing, and wearables, and
predicting even more change in the coming decade
(well Clayton, Wi-Fi dates back to 1999 and the concept
of wearables has been around for 20 years, but yes, in
terms of the mainstream, you’re accurate). Here is a
short rundown of some of what Alan saw or heard:
•
Alcatel-Lucent — which has been a steady
infrastructure player in higher education and K-12
for some years — coincidentally announced that
it has successfully closed a transaction with China
Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy
Development Center for the divestment of its
Enterprise division. Cash proceeds to Alcatel-Lucent
total 202 million Euros. Alcatel-Lucent will maintain
a 15% minority stake in a newly-formed holding
company, incorporated in France. That new company,
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise will also continue to
work with Alcatel-Lucent on a privileged business
relationship basis. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise will now
consist of 2,700 employees operating in 80 countries.
Education happens to be an eyebrow-raising
whopper as a percent of revenues, they told me
with specifics under NDA, but I’d already sensed that
based on other end users with whom we’ve spoken.
And the Enterprise business says it will continue to
invest and innovate in its core markets, focusing on
enterprise communications and networking — while
exploring new market opportunities in select, high-
Educause 2014 Topline
Alan D. Greenberg, agreenberg@wainhouse.com
Educause 2014, the largest IT and Ed tech event for the
higher education community in North America, took
place last week in Orlando, Florida. More than 7,000
attendees (end users and exhibitors) and hundreds of
vendors were there. Big show. Not a lot of big news but
Alan visited with some old and new friends on both the
vendor and end user side even as many vendors talked
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
L-R: Gus Vasilakis, Head of North America, Alcatel-Lucent
Enterprise; WR’s Greenberg; Scott Hughes, CIO Moravian College;
& Neal Tilley, Education Specialist, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
PAGE 2
growth countries, vertical solutions
and cloud services. We briefed
with the team and one of their
customers, Moravian College —
comments below.
•
•
Blackboard announced the
availability of a cloud version
of its flagship LMS, Blackboard
Learn. With the delivery of its
Software-as-a-Service model (preannounced at Blackboard World),
Blackboard is now the only company
to offer customers three different
ways to deploy their system: locally
on-site, through Blackboard’s Managed Hosting
offering, or with the new SaaS / public cloud option
— though the company’s focus is clearly cloud.
The company also told us that The University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has expanded
its partnership with Blackboard by moving to the
company’s customized learning and analytics offering
via Internet2’s NET+ Solution and Services for its
higher education members.
Sonic Foundry has deepened its integration
between Instructure Canvas courses and Mediasite.
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easily upload video or record flipped modules, full
lectures and other supporting videos, all of which
are automatically published to the Canvas course.
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or video segments are watched by which students,
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PAGE 3
•
•
Echo360 announced the availability of the Active
Learning Platform, which it had pre-announced just
prior to the conference and was showing at Educause
for the first time in person. Active Learning Platform
is engineered to elevate student performance in the
classroom and improve learning outcomes through
enhanced learning analytics. Students use the Active
Learning Platform to master course material with 24/7
access to content and personalized study guides. The
Active Learning Platform is a pure play SaaS solution
with guaranteed uptime / reliability. It leverages
Echo360’s classroom capture software, personal
capture software, and the SafeCapture HD hardware
capture appliance, and is meant for instructors to
capture everything that happens in the classroom,
with sessions automatically shared with students in
an HTML5 online learning environment. It includes
student engagement features like integrated polls,
quizzes, and other activities; content management
features that let instructors more readily manage
presentations, videos, and documents through an
instructional content management system called
the Learning Library; and learning analytics that
are comprised of real-time behavioral data on class
attendance and participation as well as results from
quizzes and polls, lecture capture usage, time spent
studying and more.
one booth was packed, it was the Google booth,
where the company also had demos of Google Apps
for Education and the recently announced Google
Classroom, which we wrote about this summer.
Not to be outdone Microsoft made a lot of noise
about its 1 TB of storage available to Office 365
for Education customers. And there was a lot of
discussion as to whether the company will need to
follow Google’s lead.
•
Kaltura announced its new Video Creativity
Suite. The new suite includes tools for capturing,
creating, recording, uploading, editing, annotating,
segmenting and adding calls to action to videos.
The suite includes Kaltura CaptureSpace, which
is the company’s recently announced personal
capture tool, and which allows faculty, students, and
instructional designers to easily create multi-source
video recordings. Kaltura claims it has designed its
Video Creativity Suite with an intense focus on ease
of use, accessible design, and single click capabilities.
And the company indicated to us very rapid growth
(nothing new there) as well as an extraordinary set of
educational wins in Brazil, even as it is expanding into
Asia/Pac.
•
Dell announced a series of customer wins and, in
a private briefing, showed me a Dell Venue 8 7000
Series tablet — world’s thinnest — that will blow
the minds of some future education (and corporate)
users. The company also continues to brag about
its success in education, where its ability to provide
high-level device support to its customers becomes
a strategic advantage when it comes to providing
other network and infrastructure services. We’ve said
it before, but Apple’s ownership of the classroom is
not absolute.
•
HARMAN’s AMX introduced the AMX Enzo screen
mirroring of mobile device content, new AMX Massio
ControlPads, and new enhancements to the AMX
Rapid Project Maker (RPM) Cloud-Based Configuration
Resource. The addition of screen mirroring to the Enzo
Platform directly benefits university lecturers already
using Enzo collaboration capabilities by providing
a way to display their mobile device content onto
the larger screen of a large classroom or lecture hall.
(Available to students as well.) Enzo screen mirroring
is immediately available for tablets, smartphones
and laptops (Windows/Mac OS X). AMX’s Massio
ControlPads helps meld the installation flexibility and
affordability of wall / lectern mount keypads with
Google announced its Google Drive for Education,
an “infinitely large, ultra-secure and entirely free
bookbag for the 21st century” as the company puts
it. Drive for Education will be available to all Google
Apps for Education customers at no charge and
will include unlimited storage (with files up to 5 TB
in size!), Google Apps Vault, its solution for search
and discovery for compliance needs, and enhanced
auditing tools and an Audit API. All free! If any
Googleholics Getting a Dose of Classroom
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
PAGE 4
the device and room control capabilities of a central
controller. Massio ControlPads can be configured,
right out of the box using the AMX Rapid Project
Maker (RPM) cloud-based configuration tool, with
no programming required. AMX also introduced
its Campus Explorer Education App and a completely
redesigned education website.
•
In a smaller booth area than is typical for its usual
presence at events, SMART Technologies showed
off its SMART kapp dry erase board — and no other
products — which initially raised some eyebrows.
Apparently the company decided to return to
Educause this year with the simple-to-use kapp
board, which was announced earlier this year. The
board lets you write and draw like you would a
regular dry erase board. You can then connect a
Bluetooth-enabled mobile device to the capture
board by scanning
a Quick Response
(QR) code or
by tapping
the Near Field
Communication
(NFC) tag. When
you first connect
your mobile
device, you are
directed to the
Apple App Store
or Google Play
to download the
SMART kapp app.
Then you can
use it to connect
to the kapp
board and share
content. The $899
SMART kapp Board Sneaking into the
MSRP board lets
Google Booth
you save files to
Evernote, PDF,
and JPG formats, and you can email a stored image or
share the screen with a local viewer for collaborating.
Remote users can receive a URL that enables them to
join the session. Not only was the company showing
off the kapp board in its own booth, it had shared
one with Google, which highlights the extent to
which this pair continues to partner on technologies
(witness SMART amp tied into Google Apps for
Education).
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
What Alan thinks: Last year I wrote that Educause 2013
felt like an earthquake had occurred offshore, with the
crowd knowing “something” had taken place but not
yet realizing its importance. To beat that dead horse
deader, the crest of the tsunami is now approaching
shore. You could feel it as there appeared to be fewer
Chief Academic Officer and teaching and learning
pros in attendance — they already are running to high
ground — and the technologists won’t be far behind.
If there is any one
Among LMS and
“theme” coming
collaboration vendors, a
out of this year’s
tension exists: even while
Educause, it’s
Blackboard confidently has
this: storage is like
moved to the cloud, others
water. Ahh, that
like Adobe are comfortable
works with the
with their mix of premisestsunami concept!
With Google
based, cloud-, or hybrid
giving it away and
deployments of their
Microsoft not far
technologies. Don’t expect
behind, it raises
this debate to end anytime
all sorts of issues
soon, but the thought that
for a) campuses
Google and Microsoft are
that prefer to
making storage such a
run their own
premises-based
“non-issue” is a very positive
tech deployments,
thought for schools (higher
b) schools and
Ed or K-12) that want to
governments with
figure out interesting new
data security issues;
ways to leverage those
and c) what is going
assets over time. Oh,
to be possible to
and that storage is in the
accomplish with all
that data storage?
ubiquitous cloud.
(Seriously, just
as bandwidth can open up innovation, so can letting
your stakeholders do work without penalizing them
when storage might become an issue.) Among LMS
and collaboration vendors, a tension exists: even
while Blackboard confidently has moved to the cloud,
others like Adobe are comfortable with their mix of
premises-based, cloud-, or hybrid deployments of their
technologies. Don’t expect this debate to end anytime
soon, but the thought that Google and Microsoft are
making storage such a “non-issue” is a very positive
thought for schools (higher Ed or K-12) that want to
figure out interesting new ways to leverage those assets
over time. Oh, and that storage is in the ubiquitous
cloud.
PAGE 5
A few random thoughts and observations based on
visits with most of the vendors listed above and a few
other private briefings: educational markets and the
vendors that sell into them are in flux but essentially
moving up the “order of thinking” stack. Bear with me
on this: In one corner the likes of Echo360 and Sonic
Foundry and Kaltura are pushing on analytics, tools
like polling and assessments, and user-generated
content. And Blue Jeans Network and Polycom
— two video conferencing
incumbents — both were in
full force at Educause, with
the former showing off recently announced Blue
Jeans Command Center — aha, analytics! (More on
Blue Jeans’ accessibility announcements and this
week’s AT&T partnership announcement in our next
issue.) In another corner are the likes of Google and
Microsoft and SMART and Adobe offering methods of,
oh, leveraging analytics, and polling and assessments,
and user-generated content. Sound familiar? I’ve
been predicting for a while that lecture capture would
collide with web conferencing. Not only has that
happened, but also now web conferencing is colliding
with cloud-based collaborative learning spaces. And
Harman AMX and the likes of Crestron are out there
still figuring out ways of getting content onto screens
and devices in the classroom. (Sounds like SMART,
and Google, and Microsoft getting data onto learner
devices!) And the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises and
Dells and HPs and Arubas are building out Wi-Fi and
wired networks and delivering their own or partnered
approaches to campus infrastructure. So when AlcatelLucent brings Moravian College — the sixth-oldest
(est. 1742) institution of higher Ed in the U.S. — as
a great case study, you start to see that the buying
Save the Date
for the Next Wainhouse
Research Summit
May 6-8, 2015
New format. New dates. New location. New
Year. Much more 1:1 analyst time. More
networking. Save the date. Beginning the
evening of May 6, 2015, and wrapping early
afternoon May 8, 2015. Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Brown Palace Hotel. Stay tuned for details.
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
cycle of campus technology is such that vendors and
users are really beginning to understand that the
problems to be tackled start with infrastructure, but
move quickly into conversations about the intersection
between technology and teaching and learning.
Moravian’s Scott Hughes tells me that within a year
he (with Alcatel-Lucent’s help) has transformed his
all-Apple campus into a wired and wireless mecca
where the technologies are actually improving student
recruitment. All of which is to say, there were and are
a lot of different approaches to connecting campus
stakeholders, and just like Clay Christensen would
probably say, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Tata Communications
Global Analyst Conference
2014 Topline
Bill Haskins, bhaskins@wainhouse.com and
Marc Beattie, mbeattie@wainhouse.com
Tata Communications held its 5th annual global
analyst conference on September 17 and 18,
assembling 40 analysts at the Ritz Carlton in Hong
Kong. The 1 ½ day conference was led by CEO Vinod
Kumar and his executive team, who provided a view
into Tata Communications’ current state of business
and upcoming plans. Tata Communications has
grown aggressively over its 12-year history, and today
carries just under 25% of the world’s internet traffic.
The company boasts the largest fully-owned fiber
network worldwide, connecting the top five business
centers across five continents and reaching nations
that account for 99% of the world’s GDP. The company
continues to invest in its network, putting over a billion
US dollars into its infrastructure over the last few years,
and focusing on four segments: Global Enterprise,
Global Carrier Services, Media & Entertainment, and
NextGen. This latter is a new and unique segment
targeting 25 high tech companies that includes a
who’s who of leading global software and advanced
communications companies. Tata Communications’
relationship to its NextGen segment is closer to that of
a partnership, whereby the company seeks to enable
and extend services of NextGen customers in their own
lines of business.
Approximately 25% of the company’s total revenue
comes from its home region of India. In the enterprise
space 55% of its customers are located within India, and
PAGE 6
24% are located in the Americas — the second highest
region by revenues.
Like many other network providers, Tata
Communications’ current messaging positions itself
as a non-Telco. One example is how the company
has conducted a series of hackathons over the last
few years, with the intent of tapping the startup
community, incubating new ideas and learning from
this very non-Telco group. During his state of the union
opening, Vinod Kumar balanced financial updates with
details on the company’s commitment to culture and
employee development. The company has formalized
a number of creativity programs, creating internal
incubation programs (Intrepreneurship) and attending
big-think communities like the Singularity University.
Big thinking aside, Tata Communications has been
focused on delivering an expanded cloud service on a
number of fronts. Most notably, it has invested heavily
in an expanded data center footprint and will have
some 50 global data centers on net in the near future.
Much of the content over the course of the conference
referenced back to this data center strategy.
H.323 and SIP-based room systems, WebRTC-enabled
browsers, mobile endpoints, tablets, and UC clients like
Cisco and Jabber. While video is still a core feature, it
has expanded to include audio and web conferencing,
presence, messaging, persistent content sharing, and
is positioned as a federation exchange – allowing
companies federated with jamvee to connect to other
federated organizations without further configuration.
While other service providers are focusing on delivering
hosted collaboration services direct to enterprises
and/or indirect to resellers, Tata Communications is
expanding its strategy towards a platform approach.
This strategy includes the delivery and support
of a series of APIs, allowing resellers to integrate
components of the hosted platform into their existing
conferencing experience, or enterprises to enable their
business process. This modular platform approach is
positioned as a flexible solution intended to allow third
parties to purchase and leverage only the components
required based on their business needs.
What Bill and Marc think: The anti-Telco messaging has
become a consistent theme from every Telco we talk to
— and for good reason: there is a considerable amount
On the UC&C front,
the messaging was
equally bullish. Tata
Communications
UC&C product line
has grown at over
40% CAGR over the
last 5 years, and now
accounts for just
under 10% of the
company’s overall
data revenues.
The company has
achieved this aboveindustry growth by
delivering a mix
A view of Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong, from Tata Communications’ 2014 Global Analyst Conference
of UC&C services,
including global
SIP trunking, contact center (which accounts for over
of historic baggage associated with the term — slow
55% of India’s regional contact center market), and
moving, poor service, lack of user focus, etc. That said,
placing a large focus on expanding its trademarked
Tata Communications is backing up its messaging with
jamvee hosted collaboration product line. Jamvee has
concrete actions that do appear to be very anti-Telco.
grown up over the last 12 months, evolving from a
We’ve been engaged directly in Tata Communications’
video-specific hosted service model into an expanded
hackathon process, and it is apparent the company is
total collaboration platform. Today, jamvee supports a
not just tapping the startup community for product
range of disparate video clients, including traditional
ideas — it is actively learning how to think and act like
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
PAGE 7
a startup. Similarly, the next-generation customers
are a group that includes some of the most successful
software, web, and technology-based companies
in the world — you know these logos well. The Tata
Communications next gen team does not follow
standard Telco-oriented procedures associated with
slow moving product development, laborious capital
request processes, and so on. It exists in order to match
the pace expected by these leading customers —
sometimes delivering solutions in a tenth the time they
would normally deliver based on a traditional Telco
process.
On the collaboration front, the expansion from pure
focus on end user and channel sales into a modular
platform approach appears to be an excellent direction.
Embedding UC-enablement solutions within its global
network, providing APIs, and allowing for modular
integration positions Tata Communications well with
the partners with which it is connected. (This list
includes nearly every conferencing service provider
that leverages TC’s international voice services,
every major Telco, and a vast number of ISPs that are
delivering Internet-related services.) This strategy,
combined with perhaps the largest global SIP trunking
footprint, should be a recipe for success over the next
five years. As with every other good idea, the litmus
test for success will be a combination of volume and
revenue — we’ll be watching closely. To dig deeper
into Tata Communications’ strategy, we conduct a 1:1
with Peter Quinlan, VP of UCC Product Management,
later this issue.
News in Brief
•
In mid-September, Sony briefed WR on a soon to
be released video conferencing system; the PCSXC1. The PCS-XC1 is the newest member of the PCS
product line and is expected to be available in early
November 2014 for a list price of US $3,980 (for the
720p version — 1080p support is available for an
additional $1,600). The PCS-XC1 features include
H.323 and SIP support; 4 Mbps total communication
bit rate; 1080p 30 fps H.239 dual-stream (default
of SXGA — 1080p also requires software upgrade);
MPEG4 AAC 22 kHz and G.722 audio; three video
images on a single display (near-end, far-end, and
content); HDMI input for content; 720p record (onto
USB flash drive) and streaming (multicast or unicast
to 10 sites); Wi-Fi support (also requires $400 software
upgrade — available in early 2015). Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the PCS-XC1 is its form factor:
the entire system is contained in the base of the
included Exmore 1080p 60 fps 12x optical zoom PTZ
camera. WR OnDemand subscribers may review Ira
and Andrew’s “take” in a new research note.
•
Skype is leveraging Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia,
as was discussed in a blog post about some work
it is doing on the audio front. The latest version of
Skype provides users with higher quality audio in
noisy environments. One innovation going on is that
by working with Nokia Lumia phones, for example,
Skype is benefitting from advanced audio processing
technology provided by multiple rear- and forwardfacing microphones on these devices.
•
LMS / Human Capital Management / Web
conferencing provider Saba has rebranded itself. No
name change. Just a
new corporate ID, with
new logo, visual system,
and messaging. Maybe
even better, the company appears to be putting
its SEC “challenges” behind it. And best of all, Saba
announced it has achieved another strong quarter,
with new cloud bookings growing 84% in the first
quarter of fiscal year 2015 over the prior year period
and 78% on a trailing twelve month basis over the
respective prior year period.
Have friends? Want to make more
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Front and Rear Views of the Sony PCS-XC1
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
PAGE 8
People & Places
Know someone in the industry who changed jobs?
Jump into a new role yourself as vendor, end user, or
channel partner? Email us at wrb@wainhouse.com to
share the good news.
•
Arkadin, Gregory Batchelor, EMEA Unified
Communications Director
•
Sonus, Michael Swade, Senior VP of Worldwide Sales
& Marketing
•
StarLeaf, Tom Burns, Head of Sales
in North America; Charles Roberts,
Business Development; Mike
McCarthy, Country Manager for UK and Ireland;
Jean Franćois Thau, Country Manager for France;
Jonathan Tracey, Director of Service Provider Sales
Cloud video conferencing & calling
•
Greg Batchelor,
Arkadin
Tom Burns,
StarLeaf
Mike McCarthy,
StarLeaf
Charles Roberts,
StarLeaf
Jean Francois
Thau, StarLeaf
Jonathan Tracey,
StarLeaf
Wainhouse Research, Mark Gotta, Client Services
Manager
Mark Gotta,
Wainhouse
Research
1:1Peter Quinlan, Vice President UCC Product
Management, Tata Communications
Bill Haskins
We had a chance to catch up with Peter Quinlan of
Tata Communications following their recent 2014
Global Analyst Conference. Based in Singapore, Peter
is responsible for Tata Communications UCC Product
Management, including Business Video and the
company’s recently updated jamvee product line. Bill
and Peter discuss key points from the conference, as well
as the company’s current doings in and future plans for
unified communications.
WR: Vinod Kumar dedicated much of his CEO keynote
to Tata’s anti-Telco philosophy. Honestly, many of your
competitors position themselves as anti-Telco. Can you
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
elaborate on this message, and what it means to Tata
Communications?
PQ: This is foundational for Tata — driven by the fact
we’re not an incumbent who can rest on our laurels.
We are a challenger everywhere we go, including India!
We’re not fat and happy anywhere — so we need to do
things differently. We have to be smarter. We have to be
better. We have to be the buddy who’s taking care of the
customer’s needs. We can’t subsidize poor service on one
product with good service on another.
This philosophy is also foundational in a sense that
PAGE 9
this is very much a Tata Group ethos — humility and a
customer centricity, and a desire to put something back
into society is very much part of our parent company’s
core philosophy.
WR: For those readers who may not be familiar
with Tata Communications, can you give us a brief
background on your company and UC&C services?
rooms, and telepresence rooms on a reservationless
basis — our mission was to democratize video.
Our jamvee UC release takes this mission one step
forward, adding audio, web, and other features
for a truly unified conference. So we provided the
foundation all at a low price — and now we’ve added
UC attributes including content sharing, instant
messaging and presence, integrating rooms, mobile
devices, browsers, and the most popular UC clients
including Microsoft Lync and Cisco Jabber. We
believe this is reflective of the way people want to
join meetings. As your provider, I shouldn’t tell you
how to join your meeting — you just join.
PQ: Tata Communications was formed in the early 2000s
during deregulation of the Indian telecommunications
market. At the time, VSNL was the Telco supporting the
entire market. When India deregulated, the Tata Group
invested and took a majority
stake in the international
long distance group. As the
If you follow the
dotcom bubble deflated, Tata
evolution, we started
Communications made a series
with telepresence, then
of savvy investments, including
Teleglobe — the world’s largest
moved to jamvee, which
voice provider at the time —
included interoperability
and Tyco Global Networks, a
between soft clients,
company deploying an extensive
and global fiber optic cable
standard rooms, and
network.
telepresence rooms on
a reservationless basis
– our mission was to
democratize video. Our
jamvee UC release takes
this mission one step
forward, adding audio,
web, and other features
for a truly unified
conference.
Tata Communications got
into the video space in 2007,
launching the first ‘Telepresence
as a Service’ offer, the first B2B
telepresence exchange, and
the first and largest public
telepresence room service. Video
was a natural product segment
for Tata Communications to
develop — we saw aggressive
growth forecasts and knew we
could provide a compelling
cost model based on our
global network and data center
assets. In our model, the more
distributed the customer is,
the more competitive we are — it’s a good fit for our
customer base.
WR: Talk to us about the evolution from your
telepresence offer into today’s jamvee UC experience.
PQ: If you follow the evolution, we started with
telepresence, then moved to jamvee, which included
interoperability between soft clients, standard
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
WR: I understand your jamvee
solution is now powered by the
Acano platform. We see Acano
popping up more frequently in
a number of service provider
clouds — we interviewed
another Acano service provider
just a month ago — how do you
differentiate from these other
offers?
PQ: Acano’s a great platform,
and we’ve worked very closely
with them to create a best-inclass UC experience. But make
no mistake — this is very much
a Tata service. We’ve taken
attributes of our telepresence
service, leveraging our cloudbased switching fabric, to
create a truly global, seamlessly
interconnected solution — a
global, cloud-based bridge. Our
approach provides capacity
benefits, disaster recovery
benefits, and specific regional
benefits.
We’re also working with other providers to wholesale
this service and extend it into their regional networks.
Bottom line, Acano is the best enterprise bridge
technology, and we have the best network service —
combining network, data center, managed services, and
delivering a secure and stable UC experience.
WR: At the global analyst summit, Anthony Bartolo
noted your aspiration to be the platform of platforms
PAGE 10
— extending your solution into other provider clouds
sounds like it hits on this strategy. Can you give us more
detail?
PQ: Two things: first, you can view our service as
a pyramid, with a foundation of fiber-optic cable
infrastructure, supported by network services,
connecting a global data center footprint, delivering
a broad range of regional SIP trunking services, and
delivering application services like jamvee at the edge.
With Tata Communications, you have a service provider
capable of providing a top to bottom SLA, accountable
all the way down to the cable in the ground. We have the
pedigree of a platform that compliments all of this, and
augmented by the reach of multiple Telco relationships
that we have established — extending this platform to
other service providers.
Second, if you look at our jamvee application layer, we’re
delivering a robust API-based wrapper. We understand
that partners and enterprises will want to consume
these services in many ways. Our API wrapper enables
third parties to consume and adapt and build their own
platforms or other services. Moving forward, we’ll be
extending APIs for SIP trunking, international toll-free
services (ITFS) and location and monitoring services
(LMS) — enabling a wide variety of customer and
partner services.
WR: Lots of providers talk a big game on APIs — do you
have solutions actually in the works?
PQ: Absolutely. We’re working with a large global bank
to video-enable their contact center application. We
have partners who we work with around the APIs, and
Tata has put a lot of work into the service layer. But
still, the bank itself has resources developing on their
contact center and CRM applications. So they have skin
in this game — their developers are doing the actual
development.
WR: As you find yourself in this new, hosted UC&C
enablement space, are you feeling pressure to deliver
hosted UC applications as well?
PQ: Yes. Ultimately, we’ll host the major platforms. You’ll
see us enter the hosted Lync space. We’re simply getting
pulled this direction. We are enabling these platforms
with SIP trunking and with jamvee, and we’re often
asked “can’t you just host Lync for us as well”? You’ll see
us hosting Cisco HCS — this is in progress now. Overall,
we’re focusing on applications that are in line with our
current direction, those we’re supporting today. It’s a way
to give the customer a complete solution — and we’re
looking at the applications that fit very nicely with the
solutions that are core for us.
New Studies from Wainhouse Research
For information on WR studies and subscriptions, visit www.wainhouse.com or contact sales@wainhouse.com
4Visual Collaboration and Audio Visual
Microsoft Lync in the Conference Room
Many Product Options Abound
2014 Video Conferencing Channel Partner Survey Report #1
Offerings and Customer Attitudes
4Streaming & Webcasting
First Take: VBrick Serves Up “Cloud-Native” Streaming Platform
Rev” release marks important step in vendor revamp
PGi Acquires TalkPoint
Major Collaboration Player Makes Big Streaming Push
4Personal & Web-Based Conferencing
21 Web Conferencing “Influencers and Contenders”
Brief profiles that reveal how the underlings compete against the “Big Six” - and each other
The Web Conferencing Industry: Market Implosion or Explosion?
WR UC&C Summit 2014 Presentation (video)
Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
PAGE 11
4Unified Communications
2014 Worldwide UCaaS Market Forecast
Market Sizing and 5-Year Forecast of the Worldwide UCaaS Service Market
Microsoft vs. Cisco Unified Communications
An objective overview of each vendor’s approach to UC (Presentation Deck)
4Distance Education & e-Learning
Adobe in Education and Training
Company Profile Examining Adobe Web Conferencing, e-Learning, Marketing, and Other Offerings
SMART amp: First Take
Description and analysis of SMART Technologies’ most recent cloud-based teaching and learning platform.
4Audio Conferencing
Conferencing Service Provider Statistics (SpotCheck) – Q2 2014
This study details the calendar Q2 2014 trends of the worldwide collaboration service provider (CSP) market. Data is provided for audio and web conferencing
services.
BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice
WR’s Hands-On Testing and Opinions on BT’s New Audio Conferencing Service
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Volume 15 Issue #19/ 08-October-14
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