Feature
Norwegian firm Global IP Solutions brings video conferencing to Android devices with VideoEngine Mobile.
Face the Future
As mobiles become an ever bigger part of doing business, video conferencing will be increasingly commonplace in lieu of voice or text messaging. As Android becomes a bigger player in the mobile market, it will be services like video conferencing from Global IP Solutions (GIPS) -- also available on the iPhone and Windows Mobile -- that make it more appealing to enterprises.
In the world of unified communications, having video is desirable, but complex to code and integrate. GIPS offers its VideoEngine Mobile to provide a stable video and audio service (also available as an API for companies to plug into existing systems). While there is no firm word from GIPS on end-user applications or deployments, there is a rough video displaying the technology in action.
Who Will UC?
Unified communications (UC) solutions are coming out for smartphones in increasing numbers. Last year saw Escaux burst out of the gates with its UC solution, but without video. Looking through the list of major players like Nortel and Cisco, none of them offer mobile video conferencing, yet. So, we suspect that either a raft of other solutions is imminent, or GIPS is going to rake in a bunch of contracts.
Unified communications tools will rapidly start adopting mobile video conferencing
Either way, unified communications is going to see some frenzied activity in the next year or two as the software tried to catch up with the capabilities of the new generation of mobile hardware.
