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BlueJeans-Dolby meeting room service focuses on UC audio

In UC news, BlueJeans launches a UC audio offering with Dolby Voice, Talkdesk gets $100 million toward CCaaS, and Silver Peak's SD-WAN platform earns a VoIP performance certification.

Micah Levine
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Published: 11 Oct 2018

Video conferencing provider BlueJeans is targeting meeting rooms through its partnership with Dolby. The newly available product, BlueJeans Rooms with Dolby Voice, looks to compete specifically in the growing huddle room market. The product is an extension of the ongoing partnership between BlueJeans and Dolby.      

The vendors are looking to capitalize on the huddle room market. By 2022, huddle room meetings are expected to represent about 70% of all video conferences, according to Frost & Sullivan.

BlueJeans Rooms with Dolby Voice offers UC audio on a Dolby conference phone and connects users on desktop, mobile devices or room-based systems. Dolby Voice Room technology offers features that look to improve the user experience, including the ability to adjust to active speakers, user action and lighting conditions, as well as calendar integration, room schedule display and one-touch join capabilities.

Along with its UC audio features, BlueJeans Rooms with Dolby Voice includes high-dynamic-range video mapping with its 4K ultra-high-definition Dolby Voice camera and whiteboard view for remote participants.

The Dolby Voice Hub manages and controls each Dolby Voice Room deployment. The appliance will receive automated software and security updates, and it provides IT with remote access controls, such as room system analytics and management controls.  

Talkdesk raises funding for cloud contact center development

San Francisco-based Talkdesk has raised $100 million in Series B funding to research and develop contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) technology. The funding was led by Viking Global Investors and DFJ.

Talkdesk will use the funding to focus on research and development in intelligent, context-sensitive routing of voice and digital interactions, as well as actionable analytics, machine learning and AI. The funding will also help Talkdesk expand its add-on tools, integrations with collaboration platforms and its AppConnect Innovation Ecosystem.

The company's goal is to improve the customer experience with its cloud-based Enterprise Contact Center Platform, which offers AI capabilities to help agents by analyzing customer interactions and offering next-step suggestions.

Gartner has said it's too soon to tell how significant AI will be to CCaaS technology, but most vendors in the market are in early stage development of AI services. Talkdesk was named a visionary in the 2017 Gartner CCaaS Magic Quadrant report.

Gartner cited Talkdesk's AppConnect partner program as a strength, but also pointed out that it does not support some key contact center technologies, which could present problems or delays in multivendor deployments.

Silver Peak platform earns VoIP performance certification

Silver Peak has earned the Miercom Performance Verification certification for its Unity EdgeConnect software-defined WAN edge platform. Silver Peak, based in Santa Clara, Calif., achieved the certification after a series of tests of the platform's voice-over-IP (VoIP) performance over consumer-grade broadband links.

Miercom, an independent network test lab based in East Windsor, N.J., conducted three tests with and without the Silver Peak high-availability tunnel bonding and path conditioning enabled. The tests revealed the following:

  1. Voice performance over a single broadband link. The test call experienced an immediate loss of quality without the EdgeConnect path conditioning features enabled. When the features were enabled, the same testing conditions showed stronger call quality, despite packet loss.
  2. Voice performance over two broadband links with one impaired link. EdgeConnect provided sustained VoIP quality of service, even with 55% packet loss on the impaired link. Test end users did not experience interruptions or call degradation when path conditioning capabilities were enabled.
  3. Voice performance with two impaired broadband links. Each broadband link experienced up to 20% packet loss, but EdgeConnect's path conditioning capabilities counteracted packet loss and other quality issues.

Voice quality during the tests was measured using mean opinion score (MOS), which uses a one-to-five rating scale. Silver Peak's EdgeConnect platform needed to achieve an MOS of three or greater to receive the certification.

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