With Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in full swing this week, we went down to the Lifesize stand, B180 in Hall 14, to find out more about some of their new releases.
Andy Nolan, VP of UK, Ireland and Northern Europe at Lifesize, told us all about them. The new innovations will help their customers maximize their collaboration investment and work more efficiently and productively. They will also ensure Lifesize can reach a larger market of customers.
The most crucial development may well be the new integration enabled with Polycom and Cisco systems. Customers have always been able to call with Lifesize using standard protocols but the new integration now enables a raft of additional features such as directory dialling, dual-stream video and firewall-traversal.
“For our customers that have those products (Cisco and Polycom), they might have made the investment over the last few years – it offers them the ability to connect into our cloud service and enable all the features and functionality that they previously weren’t able to”
Following the announcement yesterday Lifesize will also be running an incentive for new opportunities logged now for this integration, which could result in a years free registration for existing customers.
Lifesize have also redesigned their existing iOS and Android mobile apps. The concept behind this was to ensure a user-friendly, consistent experience throughout the possible device eco-system operated by end users.
“If the experience is different it confuses unnecessarily. We want that consistency across the board. The app is the final piece of the jigsaw”
The development enables a simple, modern UI and will include brand new mobile-friendly features like pinch-to-zoom, listen-only mode, call and chat notifications, and the ability to text a meeting invitation.
Improved experience for users has also driven the development of direct routing within internal networks. By avoiding unnecessary routes to the cloud and back, where possible, the audio, video and content are routed internally within customer networks. The potential benefits for customers eligible for this are huge. Achieving a lower bandwidth requirement and improved latency can result in superior audio, video and presentation quality and a better overall customer experience. Although not applicable to every customer, the new development will enable those customers with larger numbers of connections within a local network to see an improvement in service.
“If you have a lot of people that work from one location, or a campus environment, it can save money on bandwidth and further improve their experience”
Finally Lifesize have created a Microsoft Outlook Add-in. Again customer experience has been at the forefront, it’s been designed with a simple to use new layout that provides a uniform feel to other Lifesize applications. Users can easily create and schedule meetings or instantly launch a Lifesize call directly from Outlook.
It appears to have been a busy year for the developers at Lifesize but Andy reassures us that the developments and improvements won’t be stopping there.
