Vidyo Growth Spurt Continues With $17.1M In Investor Funds

Vidyo Monday announced it secured $17.1 million in its latest round of capital funding, a win the startup said will help accelerate its already steady growth in the videoconferencing space.

The $17.1 million funding round was led Triangle Peak Partner and brings Vidyo's total capital funding to $116 million since its debut in 2005. Vidyo's recent wins, however, stretch beyond investor support. In 2012, Vidyo said it saw 68 percent year-over-year growth, fueled largely by the traction its software-centric videoconferencing platform has gained in the healthcare and education verticals. Last week, for instance, Vidyo announced a partnership with education and technology consortium Internet2, through which Vidyo's videoconferencing software will be rolled out to thousands of public K-12 schools across the U.S.

As Vidyo grows, its channel partners are growing along with it. Vidyo said its top 25 partners aggregately grew more than 400 percent during the first quarter of 2011 through the third quarter of 2012. According to Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo's CEO and co-founder, the new round of funding Vidyo received this week suggests this growth is far from over.

[Related: Vidyo: We're The Right Fit For Mobile, Cloud Explosion ]

"We are showing that we have the continued ability to raise money when we need to, in order to continue to accelerate and grow," Shapiro told CRN. "As a channel partner, I [would be] looking at that and saying, 'It's another increment. Vidyo continues to grow and continues to be a partner we can rely on in the long term.'"

Vidyo, which today works with more than 300 solution provider partners, made a big channel play last year with the launch of a white label program for its multipoint videoconferencing services. Through the program, partners act as what Vidyo calls Vidyo Virtual Network Operators, co-branding and reselling Vidyo as a service to enterprise customers.

Vidyo also targeted the channel last year with the launch of its virtualized HD videoconferencing platform, or VidyoRouter Virtual Edition. Vidyo, at the time, said the new platform was optimized for solution providers with a leg already in the virtualization space that were interested in selling a cloud-based videoconferencing solution.

Vidyo attributes much of the growth it has seen to its videoconferencing products being more competitively priced than those from incumbents like Cisco or Polycom. Vidyo products work based on an Adaptive Video Layering (AVL) technology, which lets users tap into general data networking and the Internet for connectivity in lieu of a dedicated QoS network.

PUBLISHED APRIL 22, 2013