In association with Pexip
Videoconferencing software provider Pexip has its sights set on revolutionising the way Irish companies utilise video. Its unique offering simplifies video communications for Irish organisations by unifying callers across multiple platforms and devices. After launching a successful IPO last year and seeing the effects of the Covid-19 video conferencing boom, the company recently announced plans to expand operations in Ireland with the appointment of Niall Doyle, Ireland country manager. We caught up with Doyle to discuss the future of videoconferencing, software interoperability, and Pexip’s decision to expand in Ireland.
Pexip offers a scalable and secure platform that can be tailored to meet organisations’ needs. Briefly describe how Pexip’s solutions can amplify communication and collaboration within a business?
At Pexip, one of our primary focuses is to remove the complexity from collaboration. Our solutions can be easily integrated with customers’ existing collaboration tools, extending the reach and efficiency of these systems within organisations as well as maximising return on investment by replacing the need to ‘rip and replace’ legacy infrastructure. As the requirement for video grows across organisations, Pexip supports mixed technology environments, which is especially important for hybrid working.
From a user experience standpoint, what makes Pexip’s offering unique?
Users of the technology want to be able to make a call/video call quickly and easily. They don’t want to have to think about what app or device they’re using, and they shouldn’t need to know what type of technology is being used by the other meeting participants. Users can simply schedule a call, connect, and have a meaningful meeting with their colleagues, customers, partners, regardless of technology or location.
Throughout the past year, videoconferencing has been embraced like never before. As customers adjusted to the change, how did their requirements change? What changes do you anticipate seeing as we emerge from the pandemic?
The increase in demand for video services has been massive over the last 18 months. Users had to adjust to the fact that their face-to-face meetings were now on video exclusively. This in itself was a big adjustment for a lot of people. As users become comfortable using video, their focus started to shift to the experience. How easy is it to use, how is the video and audio experience? There has been a lot of talk lately about ‘video-fatigue’ due to this shift, and due to the number of meetings people were having. Personally, I think some of this ‘fatigue’ is down to a poor video experience. Poor audio, and poor video all lead to a poor experience which can lead to frustration from a user perspective. Pexip can help reduce video fatigue with Adaptive Composition. With Adaptive Composition we say goodbye to black screens and hard to see faces as it automatically arranges your screen layout to elevate large groups and active speakers. It automatically crops, pans and tilts so you can maintain better eye contact and focus on your conversation but most importantly, it works on any device or platform. With Pexip, you’ll always get a premium meeting experience.
With regard to anticipated changes as we emerge from the pandemic – I think the biggest challenge will be adjusting to is the new hybrid way of working. In a lot of cases, organisations put solutions in place in a hurry at the start of the pandemic, they now need to consider how they are going to tie their work from home solution to their work from work solutions. Yes, it’s the same work they’ll be doing but they tend to be very different environments and bring their own set of challenges.
Interoperability can be a barrier to the adoption of videoconferencing solutions. How does Pexip mitigate that challenge?
For as long as I’ve worked in the videoconferencing/collaboration space, unified comms has never been very unified. If you want to live or work in a one-dimensional world with an end-to-end solution from a single provider, that’s fine, but it wasn’t a realistic solution 10 years ago, and it certainly not the case now. A recent survey suggested that 60% of companies are using three or more collaboration tools, Pexip can be the glue in middle, we bring all of these platforms together and remove the traditional barriers for truly pervasive video/collaboration.
After more than a year of remote working, it seems flexibility will be paramount in many organisations’ post-pandemic plans. How does Pexip support that flexibility that a lot of company’s desire?
I’m a firm believer that “work is something you do, not somewhere you go”. As we move into this new world of working, Pexip can help customers on their journey. Whether a customer is on a Microsoft Team’s journey and looking to connect to existing/legacy endpoints or video systems, looking at integrating video into their customer workflows and customer journeys through contact centre integrations, or video enabling existing customer portals with video services (for example virtual banking), Pexip can help. Pexip is the only provider who can truly provide a ‘browser to the boardroom’ type experience.
How does Pexip ensure user data is secure and protected?
At Pexip we offer multiple deployment options. We can provide a public cloud service, a private cloud service, or we can provide an on-prem deployment. With an on-prem solution the customer can deploy a full video service on their own network using their own data centres. The recent cyber-attack on the HSE highlighted the importance of security and the impact a breach of security can have. Security is one of our founding principles and we operate and maintain the highest standards of security across all our POPs globally. We have several very security conscious customers using our services, including the courts services both in the North and the South of Ireland.
Every business has a unique set of needs. How can Pexip address the individual needs of an organisation?
We work with our customers to understand their business needs and where Pexip and video can provide additional value to their existing workflows. Some customers may just want vanilla videoconferencing in its standard form, others are thinking outside the box and are working on creative ways to better engage with their staff, colleagues, customers, and business partners. Regardless of the vertical, whether its banking, legal, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, or retail, we can provide solutions across them all.
Pexip recently announced plans to expand operations and strengthen partnerships in Ireland. As well as growing its Irish team, Pexip is planning to secure regional premises here. Why Ireland?
Creating a local Irish team is an important milestone for Pexip as we continue our growth with geographical expansion. Ireland is an incredibly important market in which we already have secured valued customers in healthcare, judicial and the enterprise. The ability to provide local support to the large multi-national and global customers headquartered in Ireland as well as supporting the public sector with our vertical solutions for government provides confidence that our investment will deliver further local success.
The business plan for Ireland includes additional investment in headcount for technical and partner management across the next three years with regional premises also the long-term goal. Pexip does not sell directly, 100% of our revenue is delivered through our accredited partner community providing a huge opportunity for our local Irish partners to grow and establish their video and cloud revenues through our joint success and ensuring we contribute to the local economy.
Pexip is in hyper growth mode following its recent initial public offering (IPO) and growth triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. What’s next for the company?
Pexip will continue to focus on delivering products, solutions and services that support and enhance our customers’ productivity and workflows. With innovation at the core of everything we do we continue to break down the barriers that exist between collaboration platforms to create a simple, effective video solution that enable users to connect from any device at anytime from anywhere. As organisations prepare for the future of work, delivering an outstanding user experience is more important than ever. Pexip is already using AI to improve the user experience in video calls and recently announced a key partnership with Nvidia to further enhance the quality of our virtual meetings with the ambition to make virtual meetings better than real life.
Visit pexip.com for further information.
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