Pexip, an Oslo, Norway-based provider of telepresence software, recently introduced a platform-agnostic video conferencing solution that can support geographically dispersed teams of any size. The company says that Pexip Infinity is compatible with a wide range of endpoints, including mobile devices and popular real-time communications clients such as Microsoft Lync and WebRTC.

Pexip Infinity can be deployed on x86-based commodity servers using “standard IT and virtualization tools,” presumably from traditional vendors like VMware. The firm hopes to lure in enterprise customers by giving CIOs the freedom to choose from two different payment options: pay as you go and pay as you grow.

“Software-based solutions, cloud services and growing virtualization in video conferencing are pushing out expensive fixed capacity infrastructure solutions and opening up the floodgates of adoption, making videoconferencing affordable and scalable for all, including desktop and mobile users,” said Roopam Jain, the director of research of Frost & Sullivan’s Unified Communications and Collaboration group. “The industry has been waiting for a solution like Pexip Infinity.”

Accessibility across devices helps Pexip scale

Indeed, the consumerization of IT is pushing organizations to integrate more chat tools and teleconferencing solutions into the underlying technology accessed by end users on a regular basis.  As workers become more mobile, even within their office space, videoconferencing will present itself as a viable option for real-time meetings.  Pexip is pushing expectations for how videoconferencing is accessed by end users and scaled by IT, all the while simplifying integration and costs for the mindful CIO.

Accessibility across devices is also key to Pexip’s scaling capabilities and end user appeal, and the startup’s knowledgable and highly experienced team is leveraging the growing community of open APIs to grow its business.  Pexip not only uses open APIs to slot into existing infrastructure, but also provides their own APIs “so other parties can develop applications that leverage our solution,” says Hakon Dahle, CTO and co-founder of Pexip.

“One can imagine third party apps for smartphones and tablets that control our experience and add functionality,” Dahle continues.  “With our support for web RTC, that opens up a slew of applications for any HTML5 web portal.  By supporting those, we’re in a good position to drive innovation from other companies.”

Pexip’s model for growth: partners and APIs

Pexip’s APIs will be an important focal point for the startup moving forward, as it relies on a partner channel-only strategy for the distribution of its enterprise-ready software.  Encouraging third parties to build apps around Pexip’s service will be key in establishing an ecosystem around the virtualized cloud collaboration tool.

Also necessary to the success of Pexip’s distribution model is flexible licensing, which touches on an increasingly important topic for an entire industry shifting to virtualized software solutions.  Dahle provides some great insight as to how software and data center virtualization are impacting SLAs and business models alike.  Below is an excerpt from a recent interview with Dahle:

• Compared to custom hardware-based multipoint conferencing units, our solution:
  

(1) Removes the need for special purpose management and diagnostics tools,

(2) Allows the IT staff to use standard tools (e.g. VMWare Vcenter) which allows for a better and more familiar way to monitor and diagnose the system, and provides more accurate tracking of an agreed-upon service level, and

(3) Leverages standard virtualization features such as VMotion which allows for vastly increased uptime and hence higher service levels.

Software together with a distributed architecture means that (a) conference nodes can be distributed across the globe, reducing latency for previously remote participants such as people in Asia who may previously have had to connect to a US datacenter even for local meetings, and (b) bandwidth usage can be kept local, reducing bandwidth consumption on the (MPLS) WAN.

•  Business models

(1) Ease of starting a hosted service offering due to lower cost of entry. No massive investment in hardware required.

(2) Ease of making a service global without a global workforce. If there is data center availability, one can easily start a service remotely without the need to ship, install, or manage custom hardware.

(3) Ease of adding capacity – again no need for hardware.

(4) Enabling subscription-based payments is huge.