Ricoh selects Vidyo to bring high quality video conferencing to unified communications and collaboration platform

TOKYO, JAPAN & HACKENSACK, USA: Ricoh Co. Ltd., a worldwide leader in digital office equipment and advanced document management solutions and services, and Vidyo Inc., the first company to deliver personal telepresence, announced a partnership under which Ricoh will integrate Vidyo’s innovative, high definition, multiparty video conferencing platform into Ricoh’s new unified communications framework.

As a result of this partnership, Ricoh will deliver two groundbreaking Unified Communications (UC) solutions later this year based on Vidyo’s award-winning platform.

Ricoh’s new unified communications environment will enable users to collaborate using audio and video communications while sharing graphics, text and even handwritten documents. Ricoh expects the revenues from its UC business, the company’s first foray into video and audio communications, to reach $1.25B by 2015. The first two Vidyo-based Ricoh UC products to be launched this year will be a portable Unified Communications device and a similarly featured room system.

“In developing Ricoh’s UC offering, it was critical for us to identify ‘best of breed’ partners who have established track records for delivering innovative, ubiquitous solutions,” said Hidefumi Nakamura, GM, UCS Business Department, Ricoh.

“Vidyo was clearly our top choice for a video communications and collaboration platform. Vidyo’s intellectual property, and their new architecture utilizing H.264/Scalable Video Coding (SVC) for video conferencing, is the most advanced in the market. Our customers will benefit from the high level of quality and stress-free video communication that result from the unique integration of Ricoh and Vidyo offerings. ”

“Our partnership with Ricoh is a validation of the Vidyo platform by another leading global company that recognizes the quality and disruptive economics offered by Vidyo’s unique architecture,” said Ofer Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of Vidyo. “We are pleased that Ricoh has embraced Vidyo’s Platform and next generation architecture, demonstrating their commitment to advancing the Unified Communications and Collaboration market with the introduction of products that offer new capabilities and allow partners to innovate to deliver future-proof solutions.”

Vidyo is the first and only low-latency, highly error-resilient software-based, multi-party “telepresence” quality video conferencing that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time via the Internet and other general IP networks. Its unique VidyoRouter architecture, based on the H.264 /SVC standard, provides rate and resolution matching for each endpoint while dynamically adapting to changing bandwidth. This means, Ricoh customers will receive the best quality video communication possible via any network. Vidyo’s technology is a key advancement in making natural, high quality video conferencing universally available over the Internet, 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi networks.

Vidyo platform partners include HP, Google, Hitachi, Teliris and Intel. In December of 2010, Vidyo announced that KDDI, a leading global carrier in Japan, will offer Vidyo-based services to its customers.