Video Sphere

Google just announced they acquired Marratech’s video conferencing software.

Most people only focus on the video conferencing feature, but Marratech’s technology is much more than that: it allows to collaborate remotely, sharing a whiteboard or applications.

Added values of Marratech software:

A short presentation of this video conferencing & collaborative platform is already available on YouTube:

The Marratech’s software is available for multiple platforms (Windows, Apple, Linux) which is probably one of the added value Google was looking for, as a competitor of Microsoft and strong supporter of open-source software such as Linux or Firefox.Another value of Marratech’s video conferencing software is that every communication is encrypted, making it a strong base for a secured collaborative solution. If you are already using Google online applications, you probably already know that Google always encrypt communication when needed (authentication to Gmail and other Google application…).Competition already there:

This news follows the recent Cisco announcement for the acquisition of WebEx, a company developing and delivering another collaboration platform.

I do not even talk about Microsoft that has already moved towards the collaborative wave for a long time and is now basing Office 2007 commercials in that way:

(via Business Garden)

Google strategy:In short term, we can suppose that Google will implement the video conferencing solution within its instant messaging software Google Talk. Indeed, when competition (Microsoft Live Messenger, Skype, Apple iChat) is already proposing video chat, Google Talk is still proposing text & audio conversations.But it is also highly probable that Google strategy is to provide a complete professional suite of online applications including Google mail, agenda, documents & spreadsheet, … within a collaborative framework, including video communications and live sharing of documents and applications.