Tandberg video phones get Broadsoft features
Tandberg video phones will be able to mashup hosted PBX features of Broadsoft platform through a partnership between the two. The arrangement seems similar to a hosted PBX solution except that the IP phone is being substituted by video phone. Broadsoft features such as call hold, forwarding, transfer and resume are already available on Tandberg video phone. The phone will support enhanced features such as device management in future. One-to-one or point-to-point video calls are already supported.
Seen from the other side, this will, to some extent, add video elements to the existing hosted PBX features. For instance this will enable video receptionist capability adding a “virtual†front desk whereby two way video and audio communication takes place between a remote employee and a visitor.
The joint solution is obviously for enterprise users. Broadsoft has also made a mark in residential telephony. However there are no plans to tap the residential video telephony market yet. One of the former employees of Broadsoft last year founded Vidtel, a video telephony service company.
The standards that Broadsoft platform follows in adding video calling to the PBX environment is H.264, H.263-1998 or H.263-2000.
Tandberg is one of the market leaders in business video phones with a global market share of about 40% in video end points and about 45% in the related infrastructure. In the last five years, Tandberg has sold almost a quarter of a million video end-points.
