I thought I saw a familiar face on CNBC the other day. Lo and behold it was Vidyo CEO, Ofer Shapiro, fresh off of a great showing at InfoComm, where his company highlighted a number of both technology advances, and new use cases. As I covered their booth, I was impressed with the technology, but even more excited about the fact that we have gotten to the point where we can take video out of the boardroom and start getting unforeseen value from its new potential applications.
In the clip above, Ofer is continuing that message of video collaboration beyond the boardroom, using banking call centers as an example. While the interview seems to be focused on the banking application, he does note that the real point is that VC technology (and, of course, his company in particular) is ready for new uses. In other words, you can expect video to be an integral element to the growing “Internet of Everything”. For more detail, please see my recent coverage on Vidyo’s expanded vision, as well as their plans for their recent round of funding. Since I wrote that piece, Vidyo has announced additional new uses or capabilities of its platform, including Lync support for their VidyoH2O interop offering for Google Hangouts, as well as video support for Citrix virtual desktop environments.
The reporter asks what I think is a rather strange question. It is strange because it starts with an assumption that people will find video banking to be very impersonal and dislike it as a result. First of all, that hasn’t been my experience with videoconferencing, whether it be Facetime with the family or business VC solutions (such as Vidyo), with clients, the face to face element makes the level of connection much closer on a personal level to an in-person meeting, than any other readily available communications technology. Secondly, people are currently using phone banking, or online banking, very regularly. Certainly the ability to upgrade a phone or text support session to a video session would add a human touch and make it more personal. I guess the difference is the reporter was approaching video banking as an alternative to driving to the bank, while I see it as an alternative to phone support. Regardless, Ofer stands up for the personal touch provided by VC as you can see in the video above.
Perhaps the mainstream is still a little confused about how VC technology is now being leveraged outside of the boardroom, but its very exciting that after decades of waiting for mainstream interest in VC, it is actually happening.
