Video Conferencing systems Reviews
Video conferencing and collaboration could unlock new levels of productivity in teams, but to date most video conferencing solutions have been out of reach for the majority of businesses and applications. That’s because today they typically require expensive proprietary hardware installations, along with software systems that weren’t built for an increasingly mobile workforce.
A startup called Highfive wants to massively change that, with a sleek piece of hardware and a cloud-based video conferencing suite that will make face-to-face communications affordable and accessible even for small and medium-sized businesses.
It’s been nearly a year since we first wrote about Highfive, a startup founded by Shan Sinha and Jeremy Roy, the guys behind Docverse. They had sold their previous company to Google years prior, and were looking to find new ways to help teams communicate and collaborate with each other.
At the time we last wrote about the company, Highfive had just raised $13.5 million in funding to “disrupt enterprise communications, ” but it has been quiet since then. Now, a year later, Highfive is finally ready to take the wraps off what it has been working on.
Today, Highfive is introducing a suite of video conferencing products that includes a $799 high-definition camera and mobile applications which make it easy not just to get up and running but also to schedule and invite other participants to meetings.
The goal is to establish more face-to-face connections between workers, which the folks at Highfive believe will make meetings more productive. After being acquired by Google, they found each conference room in the Plex to be wired for video conferencing. That enabled employees to get to know and communicate with other team members even if they weren’t in the same office.
It also got rid of bothersome conference calls and document sharing. By using video conferencing and screen sharing, they were able to more effectively run meetings by cutting down on the time it took for people to dial in and the fact that people literally weren’t all on the same page when it came to documents that were being distributed.