Glowpoint and Equinix Join Forces to Advance Adoption of HD Videoconferencing
Today, Glowpoint, a provider of managed videoconferencing and video bridging services, announced an agreement with Equinix, a provider of global data center services, to offer carriers direct access to Glowpoint’s managed video services through the Equinix ’s private Layer 2 Carrier Carrier Ethernet Exchange.
Glowpoint’s suite of cloud-based managed video services and B2B video calling for telepresence and video conferencing is now available to Equinix’s Ethernet Exchange customers, who can provide these services directly to their enterprise, medium and small business customers. Equinix currently has 7 Ethernet Exchange POPs on two continents, with an eighth coming on line in a matter of days. Equinix plans that all of its tier 1 centers across three continents (19 POPs) will be on the Ethernet Exchange before Q2 2011. Current members of the Exchange include a number of carriers who derive the majority of their revenues from wholesale services, like Level 3, Reliance Globalcom and KPN International.
I recently published a report for GigaOM Pro that examines the enterprise-class videoconferencing landscape (see “The Enterprise Videoconferencing Landscape, 2010-2015” at http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/08/report-videoconferencing-unleashed/ ). During the last three years, a number of important technology advances have taken place that make HD IP videoconferencing much easier to use and more affordable than older technology that is still widely used. But one of the major impediments to widespread use of recent generation HD IP technology is the lack of interoperability of this technology – both on a vendor and service provider level. Thus the Glowpoint-Equinix announcement is an important step that allows large wholesalers and their customers to more easily engage in mixed/hybrid vendor/technology and service provider videoconferences – something that is a fact of life, but that many suppliers elect to downplay.
One of the more remarkable aspects of this type of agreement is that it can provide interoperability to small or medium businesses who use carriers that are customers of Equinix’s Ethernet Exchange (for instance, between customers of Level 3 and Abnovenet) well in advance of their peers. For example, despite the obvious business benefit, Enterprise Customer A on ATT’s managed Telepresence service isn’t yet able to interconnect with Enterprise Customer B on Verizon’s managed Telepresence service.