Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, asks Scott Wharton, CEO of Vidtel, about Vidtel’s cloud-based video conferencing service. Scott discusses the vision of the company to provide HD video conferencing for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs).

The Vidtel service enables SMEs to have business-grade video conferencing without investing in video conferencing infrastructure (e.g., session border controllers, gateways, SIP proxies).  Vidtel is device-agnostic, enabling any SIP device (e.g., Polycom, Cisco, Tandberg, LifeSize, Sony) to register to and connect with others over the Vidtel network.

Vidtel’s approach is to provide a hosted service, similar to a telephone monthly service fee, eliminating the need for customers to invest in additional IT support, servers, testing and interoperability.

To gain new customers, Vidtel is pursuing a channel strategy with video conferencing vendors, VoIP providers and and VARs.  Vidtel’s service allows VARs and VoIP providers to expand their hosted voice offerings to include hosted video.

In the case of the major video conferencing vendors, Vidtel helps solve the problem of these vendors’ niche focus on the large enterprise. Teaming up with Vidtel enables these manufacturers to address a much wider audience. Without a hosted service such as Vidtel, potential customers would be required to make substantial IT investments to accommodate HD video conferencing.

What’s next? Vidtel has already enabled interoperability between the major players’ equipment (Tandberg, Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize and Sony).  H.323 to SIP  interoperability is next.  Vidtel’s vision also includes gateways from SIP devices to proprietary standards (e.g., Skype, Google, Microsoft, Apple).

See Scott Wharton interviewed on TMCnet.