June 12, 2019
New combined offering brings simple audio to conference and huddle rooms through a subscription model
Channelnomics Staff
Everyone who has ever tried initiating a conference call in a meeting room has probably uttered that line from the old Verizon commercials, “Can you hear me now?” Establishing clear audio connections in video-enabled conference rooms is a real chore, which is why LogMeIn and Dolby Laboratories are teaming to create a simple, clear audio solution for meeting rooms that’s sold through a subscription model.
The Lowdown: The collaboration between the two companies will combine LogMeIn’s GoToRoom technology with Dolby Voice technology for simply activated audio connections that deliver clear and consistent sound quality.
The Details: Dolby Voice is part of the company’s Room-as-a-Service offering and model. As an add-on to the GoToRoom service, partners can sell the combined LogMeIn and Dolby platform through a subscription model. Dolby says subscription pricing removes the high upfront cost of equipping and supporting multiple meeting rooms and simplifies deployment.
The Impact: After many years of the promise of simplified communications and collaboration platforms, videoconferencing is quickly becoming the norm for individual desktops in meeting rooms. Users often complain, though, of sound and video quality, particularly in meeting room settings where equipment is often difficult to configure and operate. End users are looking for simple systems with high quality to meet their needs and expectations. On paper, the LogMeIn-Dolby system aims to meet that market need.
Background: Video collaboration is a hot market segment, as demonstrated by the recent Zoom initial public offering. The competitor to LogMeIn went public in April and within weeks doubled its value as its simple and effective service wowed analysts, investors, and customers alike. According to IDC, the video onferencing market will reach $1.6 billion annually in 2020.
The Buzz: “With most conferencing solutions today, people spend far too much time struggling to be heard or figuring out what is being said by participants. Dolby’s expertise in audio and video technologies enables us to deliver a natural, life-like, and intuitive conferencing experience with Dolby Voice,” said Andrew Border, vice president of the Communications Business Group at Dolby. “With LogMeIn’s leadership in the collaboration and communication market, along with our shared passion for delivering spectacular user experiences, we will now be able to deliver Dolby Voice to a larger audience.”
“As an innovator in audio and video technologies, Dolby brings an immense amount of expertise to our vision of creating best-in-class, video-enabled spaces [that are] easy to set up and manage,” said Mark Strassman, senior vice president and general manager of UCC at LogMeIn. “With companies increasingly dispersed, and analyst firms such as Aragon Research predicting that by 2022 65% of conference rooms will be video-enabled, it’s more important than ever to offer the most realistic in-room experience so that colleagues, customers, and partners can feel like they are in the same space whether they are sitting across the table or across the globe. Through our collaboration with Dolby, we are closer than ever to achieving that goal, and we look forward to delivering this to the market later this summer.”
