By Charlene O'Hanlon

Recognizing the need to provide security and flexibility to its cloud-based videoconferening services, conferencing services provider Glowpoint has teamed with Acme Packet to add the companys Net-Net Session Director session border controller to Glowpoints Open Video conferencing platform.

Open Video leverages a cloud-based infrastructure to offer secure videoconferencing services to users regardless of their system and carrier network, including point-to-point video dialing and reservationless multi-point conferences for mixed SIP and H.323 environments, in addition to managed conferences and video devices, according to Glowpoint.

Adding Net-Net Session Director to Open Video increases flexibility, enabling videoconferencing for SIP-SIP, SIP arbitrage, H.323-H.323 or SIP-H.323 connections. Net-Net resolves any signaling inconsistencies between endpoints, so users can use their existing endpoints without customization by Glowpoint.

The technology also increases security, by creating clearly defined security borders and  offering Layer 2-7 Denial of Service attack detection and prevention, topology hiding, VPN separation and interworking, and dynamic access control lists. Net-Net also prevents fraudulent use or theft of Glowpoints services.

Glowpoint has been in the business for the past 10 years enabling video users to effortlessly and securely call one another regardless of their video technology or network. As part of the announcement today we are providing an increasing number of end points for our customers and with unlimited, open access to Glowpoint’s cloud-based, hosted-video infrastructure and services, video calling within and between companies is dramatically simplified,” said Anil Balani, Glowpoints senior vice president of product development. As part of Open Video, Glowpoint supports video over public and private networks and enables service providers and Ethernet providers that connect to Ethernet exchanges to take advantage of cloud-based services. With our technology and expertise we create a market opportunity for our channel partners wholesalers, system integrators and even manufacturers such as Tandem and Polycom [to] white-label the service to maximize the utilization of video within the enterprise and increase penetration of video rooms and devices without having to worry about the back end of the video infrastructure.”

The Open Video service is expected to be available in early 2011, but the two companies now are offering a service called Virtual Video Room, a multi-protocol service offering a dial-in meet me” room for ad-hoc multipoint meetings. VVR works with SIP, H.323 and ISDN-based video in addition to audio-only, so participants wont have to re-configure their MCUs or establish carrier interconnects for private MPLS networks.