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TANDBERG’s Video Communication Server (VCS) is a multi-application device that enhances the video experience with new functionality and provides transparent communication between SIP and H.323 endpoints. TANDBERG is a provider of telepresence, high-definition video conferencing and mobile video products and services with dual headquarters in New York and Norway.

Building end-to-end solutions like the VCS with H.323/Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) dual stack capabilities, TANDBERG is helping to bridge the world of existing telepresence and video conferencing solutions with VoIP and UC so businesses can make the most of their investments.

Telepresence (News - Alert) and video conferencing solutions are helping businesses in this turbulent economy by reducing travel and related costs and increasing employee productivity. Recent research predicts that the video communication market is going to grow at a rapid pace as video conferencing expands from conference rooms to the individual – strengthening distributed workforces and supply chains. However, the ROI for both group and "personal" video will be further realized through seamless integration into a unified communications (UC) platform.

Yancey Smith, director of unified communications product management at Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp., has stated that UC is changing the way companies do business, allowing officials to communicate and collaborate from virtually any place and any device. Microsoft on its part is enhancing UC with Office Communications Server 2007 R2, using SIP to deliver complete messaging, voice and video communication across the applications and devices people use daily. TANDBERG is enabling their customers to make the most of existing video infrastructure investments by integrating video conferencing and telepresence into the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 environment.

TANDBERG VCS is said to enable video communications devices to interoperate with unified communications and Voice over IP solutions, providing the end user the best experience possible no matter what device they are using to communicate. Predicting that more organizations will adopt to personal video systems, TANDBERG has tweaked its VCS to support highly scalable deployments.

Business tools are brought together in an UC environment through the SIP standard but most videoconferencing solutions use H.323 or proprietary signaling protocols which will make the integration of video with UC platforms and UC desktop video clients costly and challenging. TANDBERG has solved this issue with its VCS, which enables SIP and H.323 inter-working without any investment in additional hardware or software.

Hakon Dahle, TANDBERG chief technologist, said in a release that the TANDBERG solution is the most elegant solution available, with the TANDBERG VCS being able to bridge the worlds of H.323 and SIP which is a real differentiator for their customers. The migration from H.323 to SIP can be done in a seamless manner by leaving existing H.323-based endpoints and infrastructure in place while using SIP to integrate with VoIP or unified communications platforms.

TANDBERG has stated that they believe video creates a community of users, not an island of communication and the VCS makes that community possible with a seamless, scalable solution.

As the use of video in UC becomes increasingly important, companies need to plan for a SIP-based future for all of their videoconferencing systems. They should also analyze and understand the challenges involved in migrating to a SIP protocol and plan accordingly with the focus on integration of existing protocols rather than one that requires a rip and replace approach.

TANDBERG recently released the PrecisionHD USB camera, sporting 720p HD Video, and Arqiva recently deployed TANDBERG’ new MPEG-2 video compression solution.