Fuze opens platform to other video conferencing apps

Fuze has made it possible for customers to join video conferences on Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom without leaving its unified communications platform.

The one-click feature will apply to customers who receive an invite link from the third-party services, which also include Google Meet and GoToMeeting. Fuze announced the feature this week at its 2021 Outlook conference, and will roll it out over the coming months in the desktop, mobile and web versions of Fuze.

The feature reduces the need to switch between different applications to join meetings. It is beneficial to companies that use multiple video conferencing services or partner with companies that do.

"To address the needs of the modern enterprise, we need to meet the user where they work, which means coexisting, embedding and interoperating with the tools commonly found in users' daily workflows," Fuze COO Rob Scudiere said in a statement.

IDC analyst Wayne Kurtzman said that although Fuze offers video conferencing, the vendor is better known for its telephony and CCaaS products. Therefore, making it easy to use other video services should help Fuze retain customers. None of the five vendors Fuze connects to offers a similar feature.

However, Fuze has a much smaller share of the market than those vendors. The company said at the event that it has roughly 1,750 customers globally. Twenty percent have 5,000 or more employees, and 40% have 1,000 employees or more.

Fuze also announced at Outlook a partnership with hands-free augmented reality gear maker RealWear. Fuze will bring its UCaaS platform to RealWear headgear used by engineers in manufacturing.

In 2019, Fuze partnered with Samsung to make its service available to retail and healthcare organizations that provide Samsung mobile devices to customer-facing workers.

Maxim Tamarov is a news writer covering unified communications. Follow him on Twitter @MaximTamarov.