Fuze for Enterprise
If you haven’t checked out Fuze lately, they are worth another look. It’s a video/WebEx type service with a very compelling freemium model. Besides the pricing, there’s a few things that make this service extremely enticing.
- Enterprise Integration: Fuze plays with Outlook, Google Calendar, Microsoft Lync, Box, Okta, and Dropbox.
- Works phone desktops, phones, and tablets
- HD Video, screen sharing, documents, and file transfer
- Because it integrates with Okta’s identity management, it can be deployed and managed centrally across teams or organizations fairly rapidly
- Fuze was known as Fuzebox. The company re-branded in April 2014. At that time it also began shifting its marketing focus from consumer to also include enterprise.
- Fuze does not look at video as a destination, but as an enabler to integrate video into workflow.
- Fuze enables multiple types of collaboration
- Peer to Peer: ad-hoc, Remote Supervision, …
- External one to one: Interviews, sales, telemed, …
- Internal Group: Team meetings, presentations, All hands, training…
- External one to many & many to many: presentations, webinars, training….
- The Freemium model invites testing and pilots
Free: up to 25 participants (12 HD), free VoIP, screen and content sharing, 1GB storage.
Pro: Adds Unlimited free PSTN, expands to 125 participants, recording.
Enterprise: Adds corporate directory integration, SSO, mgmt and analytics console, custom branding. - Pro is billed $8 per user per month, enterprise is annual.
- International PSTN services are available through BT partnership
- For room systems you can do something like the Logitech BCC3000e and your own computer, or connect to Blue Jeans or use other on-premises gear via H.264. There is also Fuze for Rooms – a DIY solution that runs on a Mac Mini.
- Fuze for Rooms is optimized for shared meeting spaces/rooms (with a few new features). It is a new license type for the service that combines with off-the-shelf hardware (Mac Mini w/ keyboard & mouse, camera, microphone, etc.). It looks similar in concept as the Chromebox for Meetings room system approach. It offers a few new features including the ability to join or launch instant meetings from a welcome screen and optimizing the visual layout across two monitors. A user can see a room’s availability via presence and instantly add it to a discussion from the Fuze application. I don’t see high end enterprise features such as remote PTZ controls, but its price is fairly compelling at $240 per year, per room (requires a minimum of 25 Fuze Enterprise licenses).
- The underlying technology is powered by Vidyo. It’s a good example of what you can do with the Vidyo Toolkit – build your own video systems or any type of application that utilizes video technologies. Vidyo is just the toolkit. Other Vidyo-based applications will be completely different.
- The current CEO, David Obrand, came to Fuze in late 2013. Brings direct cloud experience from Yammer and Salesforce.
I like freemium. I also think cloud-based video makes a lot of sense. There is no shortage of Video as a Service options, but not many that have enterprise class features.
You can try out Fuze at https://www.fuze.com.
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Dave, there are a considerable
number of “young upstarts” that offer one or more elements of cloud-based collaboration
service – in many cases for free. They provide an on-ramp for companies
to get involved with enterprise collaboration, although they don’t easily
facilitate secure collaboration across enterprise boundaries. We recently
did an analysis of some of these new players on our blog, which you can find
here: http://bit.ly/1oD7Ng1
Thanks Farzin,
I also did some recent research into collaborative solutions at Wainhouse Research. I included 4 in total and several of the same companies you listed. I am a real big fan of companies like Thinking Phones and Biba – but I don’t consider those VaaS (video as a service) like Fuze. Clearly broad UC solutions have some overlap with Video only, but there’s plenty of reasons (and room) for both to exist.