Companies target SMBs, small enterprise and mobile users for videoconferencing push

The past two weeks have seen a number of videoconferencing launches, the most recent news coming from Logitech (NASDAQ:LOGI) unit LifeSize, hosted UC provider Telesphere and Polycom (NASDAQ: PLCM). And there's more on the way from an up-and-coming player next week (check back Monday).

It shouldn't be surprising; the space is evolving as rapidly as VoIP did five or six years ago, and it is expected to accelerate to a $5 billion market in the next four years, research firm Infonetics said. That's up from $2.2 billion in 2010. Gartner, meanwhile, predicts the space could be as big as $8.6 billion by 2015.

It's a market that is being driven by a number of factors, obviously, like companies looking to reduce travel costs and still maintain contact with clients and scattered workforces and facilities.

But sites like Facebook and Google+, which support video chat, and apps like Skype and fring, which allow video calling, are making those technologies ubiquitous. There are few of us who haven't used one of those apps, and the translation to the workplace is coming quickly.

"The social networking movement that has happened is starting to bleed into the business segment," said Telesphere CTO Sanjay Srinivasan.

People go home and use social networks or go on a business trip and use Skype to touch base back home; the natural evolution is to look to incorporate more of that into the office, he said.

"It's critical to show customers tangible cost saving right away," said Srinivasan. "And it needs to be easy to use."

Currently, Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Polycom control about 80 percent of the market, much of it in the high-end telepresence segment.

But there's a tremendous amount of room to grow in that SMB market and in the small enterprise market, which both Telesphere and LifeSize, along with an array of other providers, actively are pursuing.

And, as cloud computing options continue to expand, videoconferencing providers will see even more opportunities to make inroads.

LifeSize, currently the third largest player in the space, is growing at two-times the market rapidly gaining marketshare. This week the company rolled out products to take full advantage of the cloud.

"This is a huge deal for us," said Michael Helmbrecht, vice president of product marketing for LifeSize. "It's an exciting growth space that allows us to take our video conferencing and telepresence technologies, put them into cloud services and open up a secondary path for all of our infrastructure and deployments."

Teleworkers, remote clients and, of course, telemedicine are all markets that LifeSize sees as critical to the success of its cloud offerings, LifeSize Connections and LifeSize Passport Connect.

The company also is placing increased emphasis on the mobile aspect of video conferencing, this week acquiring Italian software developer Mirial.

"Smartphones and tablets have exploded onto the scene in the past two years, and we're seeing huge demand for the ability to take part in video calling from everywhere on every device. People just want to get in," said Helmbrecht. "It's gone from an interesting phenomenon to a critical space, especially since Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad 2 launch in February. Neither Cisco nor Polycom has a good story here. It's a tremendous opportunity for smaller players in the market."

Do you have the next, great video product for the market? Drop me a note.--Jim