Promoting Video Interoperability: Cisco The Latest To Join OVCC

Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC)

The OVCC on Tuesday said Cisco has joined the consortium, along with A/V integration powerhouse AVI-SPL and Canadian telco Telus.

That brings total membership of the OVCC, which was unveiled in July 2011 and officially launched in October, to 27 companies. Major networking players such as Huawei, Microsoft and Polycom to well-known service providers such as AT&T, Orange and Verizon to solution providers with large video practices such as Masergy and Yorktel also are members.

[Related: Polycom, Service Providers to Drive Open Standards for Videoconferencing ]

The idea behind the OVCC is that the adoption of video among business users will happen faster if major video industry stakeholders can agree on a standards-based visual communication exchange -- one in which service providers won't need peering agreements to guarantee video interoperability.

OVCC had 14 members at launch and, according to Polycom, the OVCC's major sponsor, was the first time service providers came together with the purpose of addressing interoperability for business-to-business video. The consortium said that the first OVCC-compliant video offerings will be on the market this fall.

Andrew McFadzen, the OVCC's president and also head of global marketing, Network Solutions, for Orange Business Services, said the expanding membership is evidence the industry wants to unify.

"Each new member's participation adds proof that OVCC members will deliver video communication between any vendor, any network and any device," McFadzen said in a statement.

OVCC members pay a fee, and the company is run as a third-party nonprofit with a governance board. It has three officers, 11 board members -- including Cisco's Sandeep Vohra, senior director, collaboration technology group -- and an executive director.

This story was originally published on June 26.