In an exclusive interview with ITVoice, Mr. Godfrey Fletcher, CEO, Vu2Vu Networks Ltd, sharing his business strategies.
Megha Mary- Tell us more about Vu2Cloud™.
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – Vu2Cloud™ is a globally hosted video service that is VidyoPowered™. Our cloud offering allows organisations to rapidly deploy high quality video conferencing with collaboration without having to invest in or manage their own infrastructure.
Megha Mary – What have been the recent advancements?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – The most important advancement has been the integration and embedding of video into all forms of applications such as videobanking, remote education and telehealth.
Megha Mary – What is the major difference between the services provided by Vu2VuClickTM, VidyoMobileTM, VidyoDesktopTM?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – The difference between these is the endpoint on which the service is delivered. The key point is not the differences but the similarities. It gives total freedom to communicate and collaborate via video on any device anywhere.
Megha Mary – What is Scalable Video Coding?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – It’s an extension of the H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 Advanced Video Coding standard, often referred to as AVC.
“AVC has been jointly developed by the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the International Standardization Organization’s (ISO) Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) through a joint group called Joint Video Team (JVT). As a result, AVC has two official names: H.264 from the ITU parent, and MPEG-4 Part 10 from the ISO parent. It appears that people coming from the communications space tend to refer to AVC as H.264, whereas people coming from the broadcast/entertainment space tend to refer to it as AVC or MPEG-4.”
AVC has been very successful and is the standard used in practically all modern digital video applications: from videoconferencing and YouTube, to Blu-ray DVDs and the iTunes store. SVC is officially Annex G of the AVC specification.
Megha Mary – Is the company looking forward to set up a regional presence in India as well?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – We are certainly looking forward to growing our presence in the India subcontinent. Everything that we have experienced so far has been very positive. We have an excellent relationship with our local partner Lamhas Satellite Services Ltd. Our point of presence in India is now up and running and we look forward to welcoming our first Indian customers onto our network.
Megha Mary- How is Vu2Vu different from contemporary video conferencing system providers?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher- Vu2Cloud™ delivers industry-leading performance at the extreme ends of the quality spectrum.
“In network challenged environments, like mobile and wireless, Vu2Cloud™ offers unsurpassed error resiliency, and can adapt to 20% packet loss – more than double the industry average. In robust network environments that leverage 4k and 5k displays, Vu2Cloud™ delivers the most stunning quality imaginable, up to 16x better than 720p. We also provide the option to interface to existing H.323 and SIP based videoconferencing (legacy) equipment. This allows clients to retain the use of legacy room systems and interface via a network-centric gateway to desktop and mobile devices.”
Megha Mary – Tell us about WebRTC.
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – WebRTC is a technology that allows in browser video without the installation of any browser plug-ins
Megha Mary – How SVC has changed the course of quality Vu2Vu offers?
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – SVC has allowed us to eliminate the MCU from the video network and to replace it with a much simpler device called the VidyoRouter.
“The VidyoRouter is an application-level router whose job it is to receive scalable video(and audio) from each participant and selectively forward scalable packets to each of the other participants. The VidyoRouter will only forward the packets that make sense for each particular receiving endpoint. In fact, these decisions can be made dynamically. Imagine, for example, that you resize a video window in your desktop to make it smaller – the VidyoRouter can then drop any high resolution enhancement layers that it may be sending if they do not make sense for the new window size. More importantly, these adaptation mechanisms canbe used to handle dynamic variations in the available network bitrate.”
This means that we can communicate with multiple network devices from high resolution – high frame rate (such as high definition room systems) to low resolution –low frame rate (such as mobile phones) without bringing the experience to the lowest common denominator. We dynamically change the amount of video sent to each endpoint based upon available bandwidth, CPU strength and screen resolution.
Megha Mary – Tell us about your partners.
Mr. Godfrey Fletcher – Lamhas Satellite Services Ltd is one of India’s premier satellite services providers. Its head office and teleport is located at the International Info Tech Park in Vashi, Navi Mumbai with a branch office in New Delhi. Lamhas has a wealth of experience in the media and broadcasting industry and they view our partnership as an important growth initiative. Both our companies have similar cultures we both value quality service, and passionately believe in treating our customers and staff as part of our family.
