Highfive, one of the market leaders in communication solutions, recently announced a new deal with Orange. The two leading companies have joined forces to bring a more secure and reliable video conferencing service to modern brands.
Thanks to Highfive’s presence as a pioneer of WebRTC, and the scope of Orange, the two companies can deliver an easy entry point to video conferencing. Orange is even offering a free deal on video conferencing accounts until the end of July 2020.
We spoke to Richard Borenstein, the CRO of Highfive, and got a few insights from Chris Heinemann, Head of Corporate Marketing at Highfive, to learn more about what’s next for the company.
Tell Us About the Orange Partnership
Richard told me that Orange chose Highfive for a number of reasons. Highfive offers excellent interoperability, User Experience, and WebRTC for simplicity. “During the last year and a half, Orange has tested our product internally and discovered its benefits for themselves.”
According to Richard, it’s likely that work won’t simply go “back to normal” when the COVID-19 crisis is over. As a result, more companies are searching for solutions that support video conferencing. To help deliver more benefits to end-users, Highfive has been working at a deeper level with partners that simply couldn’t find the solutions they needed elsewhere.
Many businesses today want simple and easy-to-install solutions that don’t require IT expertise. “We’re aiming to deliver the quality experiences that businesses want to invest in for the long-term. Highfive is one of the leading experts in WebRTC outside of Google. We set out to re-engineer what the experience could be like for businesses without IT departments that wanted to get started with video quickly.”
Highfive and Orange ensure that video isn’t just easy to access; it’s flexible too. Any SIP solution can integrate with the Highfive experience, and there are no walled gardens to worry about.
How are You Increasing Your Work with Service Providers?
There’s a formal announcement coming in Summer about the Orange solution powered by Highfive. Both teams are keen to remind everyone that this isn’t just an Orange-born product. Orange will be selling and supporting the service, while Highfive manages the back end.
“We’ve already translated this solution into more than 7 languages.”
“The goal is to continue building on our service provider offerings, bringing in more partners, and creating a master services solution to drive Highfive into any market”
Borenstein told me that with the latest solution, Highfive has captured the attention of a lot of other operators hoping to expand their services. The growth potential that Highfive has is unlimited, particularly in a time when companies are struggling to fill a gap in their portfolio.
Security issues with solutions like Zoom meant that a lot of companies are now on the hunt for an alternative solution. “People want something that isn’t going to cost too much or require a lot of IT input. We offer that while ensuring that service providers can maintain ownership of their customer.”
Is Highfive Born in the Cloud?
The flexibility of Highfive as a solution for video conferencing comes in part from its position as a pure cloud solution. The service runs on Amazon Web Services and uses Google Cloud Platform for telemetry data so that all services can run on the cloud.
Highfive video conferencing solutions comes with cloud-based services that pair freely with hardware devices. Because Highfive is built on AWS and GCP, companies know that they’re getting industry-leading practices for security and compliance. Media sessions are encrypted in transit and at rest. What’s more, there’s support for GDPR too.
According to Borenstein and Heinemann, although businesses today need video and collaboration tools more than ever, less than 10% have these solutions installed because it’s too costly to manage room-based solutions. Highfive can get rooms up and running in a matter of minutes. Highfive provides business continuity for business, particularly those who need to jump into the cloud as quickly as possible.
Employees just need to click an URL to join a meeting, and this offers a lot of value both to end customers and service providers.
What Differentiates the Highfive Solution?
Although there are a lot of alternative options out there for video conferencing, Richard told me that people are “still turning to Highfive, even when other services are available.”
That’s because, as Richard notes, the company has a lot of unique benefits to offer. Because Highfive built its service on the open-source WebRTC framework, it offers a low-latency solution to business leaders. This is valuable for those who need to access video and audio simultaneously. This light protocol also has the potential to operate on devices that go beyond traditional laptops, phones, and web-based systems.
What’s more, Highfive also offers incredible value for audio too. Dolby Voice means that businesses can achieve an excellent and immersive combination of voice and video. Combine amazing high-quality video and audio meetings with simplicity for everything from set-up to content sharing, and it’s easy to see the appeal. All that, and with Twilio, Highfive can also offer CPaaS solutions for dial-in numbers too.
What’s Next for Highfive?
I asked Richard what was next on the roadmap for the Highfive company. He told me the first step is to make sure that they succeed in all markets with their new deal with Orange. At the same time, the company wants to continue to manage and support its internal user base.
“We’re also increasing some of the capabilities of the product. Interop is a big play for us. We want to make sure that you can use any software to join your meetings.”
“What’s more, our operating system means that you can use any hardware to plug into Highfive technology too”
Borenstein noted that relationships with Orange are forthcoming, and Highfive is continuously looking for ways to increase their footprint with multi-national companies. Going forward, they’ll be adapting their platform, expanding it to customer bases at scale, and delivering new solutions.
