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Radvision on Tuesday confirmed a new high-end videoconferencing system, furthering a strategy to go beyond its network infrastructure roots and sell video endpoints and infrastructure through channel partners.
The XT5000 unit, which is now the flagship product in Radvision's Scopia videoconferencing line, offers dual 1080p/60fps video channels, HD audio, H.264 for bandwidth efficiency, Radvision Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and other features, including, as part of a later software upgrade, a nine-way embedded MCU.
It also offers what Radvision describes as a simplified end-user experience, with visual controls similar to the ones found on mobile applications Radvision has for the iPad and iPhone. It's further enabled for Radvision's Scopia Control Multi-Touch iPad app.
Bob Romano, Radvision's corporate vice president, global marketing, said it was important for Radvision to come to the table with a full-featured room-based video unit that supported not only the latest in video transcoding needs but also audio capabilities, as well.
"What's important for a system is audio, data and video, in that order of priority," Romano told CRN this week. "You can argue that if video went away now, it wouldn't be as rich an experience, but without audio we couldn't do anything."
The actual videoconferencing hardware unit also includes USB 2.0/3.0 ports, reflecting increasing customer interest in attaching USB-connected devices, Romano said.
The XT5000 will be available from Radvision VARs and integrators later in the first quarter of 2012. It lists at $10,500.
Radvision until recently was better known as an infrastructure company, providing network and video infrastructure products under OEM agreement to companies like Cisco, for its telepresence line, and LifeSize Communications.
The Cisco agreement, at its peak, accounted for more than one third of Radvision's revenue but was brushed aside following Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg in 2010.
"With Tandberg, Cisco had the infrastructure it needed. That impacted our business," Romano said. "We still sell a little bit to Cisco but for the most part that relationship is over. So we had to add endpoints to our product line."
Radvision's aggressive expansion included a 2010 acquisition of Aethra's HD video endpoint business. Earlier in 2011, it launched Scopia Mobile v3, an enterprise application for connecting video and telepresence systems to Apple iOS- and Google Android-based devices.
"In the period of two years, we've gone all the way from mobile devices to now a full complement of room systems," Romano said.
