In a move that strengthens its stable of video-conferencing and collaboration tools, Siemens Enterprise Communications today said it will acquire Neumarkt, Germany-based FastViewer GmbH & Co. KG for an undisclosed sum.
Siemens has already incorporated FastViewer’s Web-conferencing and business collaboration tools into Siemens’ OpenScape UC Suite 2011, which the company announced in tandem with the acquisition. OpenScape is a multimedia unified communications toolset meant to help enterprises increase productivity, communication, and innovation.
While Siemens has offered desktop video-conferencing tools in previous versions of OpenScape, the latest edition expands that toolset with OpenScape Web Collaboration, based on the FastViewer technology. The latter adds Web-conferencing capabilities that allow users to move between web, chat, and multi-party desktop video conferencing with a single mouse click, the company said. The Web-conferencing capability, which can be deployed on-premises or hosted via cloud computing, offers advanced encryption, password-protected Web sessions and scalability via a cascading server architecture, according to the company.
The key aspect of the Web collaboration tool is that it is a zero-footprint client, a company spokesperson told Managing Automation. This means, for example, that it can be used via a smart phone such as iPhone or BlackBerry, as well as by a remote user working on a public computer.