Featured Article from Conferencing

Revolabs Looks to Grow Conferencing Market Share With New CEO

By Michael Guta
Contributing Writer

Three years ago, Revolabs announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Yamaha (News - Alert) Corporation. The strategic acquisition by Yamaha gave the company a new market to integrate its decades of audio technology development into. After a considerable transition period, Revolabs (News - Alert) just announced it has a new CEO, Masanori “Mick” Kamihara, the current group manager of Communication System Development Group at Yamaha.

By all accounts, this was a merger that received unanimous approval from industry experts, and Jean-Pierre Carney, CEO and founder of Revolabs, who will be stepping down to make room for Kamihara, said at the time of the acquisition, “There are a lot of great synergies between Yamaha and Revolabs, and our customers will receive the most benefit from this merger.”

For Yamaha, the acquisition meant increasing its enterprise presence for audio equipment as it continues to develop and manufacture voice communications devices that can be integrated with Revolabs' conferencing technology. And since that time, both companies have created a joint audio video solution, the CS-700, under the Yamaha brand to address comprehensive unified communications, including conferencing.

As the new CEO, Kamihara will bring the successful expansion he led at Yamaha in business audio, which includes Commercial Install Sound products for retail/BGM applications.

Kamihara said, “They [Revolabs] have impressed me with their passion for delivering innovative solutions that solve their customers' needs and their deeply rooted knowledge for building a network of strategic partners to ensure the best possible UC experience necessary in today's modern collaborative environment. As part of Yamaha's UC strategy and the Yamaha brand, we will continue to deliver exceptional support and quality to those customers and partners worldwide.”

In addition to Kamihara, the company also expanded its executive leadership in March of this year by appointing Michael Fitch as Vice President of Sales for the Americas. According to Revolabs, Fitch will be addressing the growing UC market as AV converges with IT.

The acquisition of new talent was followed by the unveiling of new conferencing and collaboration products at Enterprise Connect (News - Alert) 2017 by showcasing the family of Revolabs wireless microphones and USB, VoIP, and Bluetooth conference phones. This included the new line of YVC-300 and YVC-1000 USB and Bluetooth conference phones from Yamaha for portable group communication solutions. The YVC-300 and YVC-1000 are designed to turn smartphones and tablets into conference phones by acting as the microphone and speaker to deliver quality audio and video from remote locations.