The evolution of video conferencing and telepresence morphs to Media Collaboration as InfoComm 2014 attendees visit ClearOne (NASDAQ: CLRO) to explore an experience never before available. The company is introducing a full portfolio of media collaboration platforms— its new all-in-one COLLABORATE® appliances, and new cloud-based Spontania solutions— aimed at businesses that wish to enhance their audio and visual communications capabilities easily and affordably.

 

For the first time, customers can utilize a single appliance, a full-featured cloud service, or both, to fulfill all the media collaboration needs in the conference-room environment such as: videoconferencing, a 9-party MCU, streaming, recording and content creation, presentation, and much more. ClearOne will be demonstrating its new, comprehensive Media Collaboration solutions in booth #N1827 as well as a number of partner locations.

 

“It’s a fact that ClearOne, with its long experience as the global market leader in professional audio, understands the media requirements of both the conference room and the desktop,” said David Moss, ClearOne’s Vice President of Media Collaboration. “So it only made sense for us to leverage this experience into an innovative and otherwise unavailable solution that combines our unbeatable audio with video, adds other rich media functionality, and packages it either in an all-in-one media appliance or makes it available from the cloud on nothing more than a PC or tablet.”

 

“We know that businesses have heavy demands for high-quality audio, video, and multimedia collaboration tools. The problem has been that no single product or cloud solution has fulfilled all of those needs. Businesses were forced to compromise either by doing without or purchasing numerous products at high expense. Now, for the first time, businesses ranging from small, two-person shops to the largest enterprises can easily and affordably deploy and scale video conferencing or any other type of media collaboration,” Moss said.

 

ClearOne’s Spontania Cloud service empowers customers to deploy video conferencing, web collaboration, high-quality audio, recording and content creation, and other media collaboration without the heavy burden of expensive equipment. Designed as a carrier-grade solution, it is available in an SaaS (Software as a Service) or a PaaS (Platform as a Service) model directly from ClearOne, utilizing the Spontania Cloud. For businesses hoping to ensure locked-down security in their own data centers, Spontania is also available as virtual software image to create a private cloud.

 

The new COLLABORATE Room Pro replaces a host of traditional single-purpose products, each with their own price tag and maintenance requirements. The COLLABORATE Room Pro, as a single all-in-one solution, provides full, standards-based 1080p 60fps video conferencing, a 9-party MCU, both a streaming and content recording server, presentation, and, in a future free software upgrade, wireless projection and interactive whiteboarding from any device, including mobile systems. The new COLLABORATE Room Pro changes the game as a full-purpose media appliance with a complete range of built-in features and tools to meet the media needs of the conference room. With the introduction of our Spontania cloud service, the COLLABORATE Room Pro also integrates with the ClearOne Spontania cloud allowing users to join the meeting from PCs, Macs, and any mobile device easily and affordably.

 

It also brings together the most unique combination of pro audio with video conferencing by directly integrating with the award-winning ClearOne Beamforming Microphone Array. The Beamforming Microphone Array sets a new standard of world-class conference room audio. Now the best audio is easily combined with the best video to serve all the media needs of the conference or training room.

 

For businesses who desire an on-premise infrastructure solution, ClearOne now provides the complete single-unit infrastructure server, COLLABORATE® Control. This all-in-one appliance serves the needs of both SMBs and enterprise at a price less than half that of the competition with a fraction of the complexity. The heavy burdens of adding video collaboration pervasively have always been complexity and cost of expensive infrastructure solutions. This will no longer be true, as the COLLABORATE Control single server includes an H.323 gatekeeper, SIP registrar, license server, directory services, firewall traversal, 24 port MCU, call control, streaming, recording and content creation, and a full management system.