SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 10, 2014) - Net Power & Light, a leading provider of mobile collaboration software, today announced Spin™ for the Enterprise, an industry-first application for mobile, multi-participant video collaboration. Using Spin, up to ten people can participate in a video call while simultaneously viewing documents, photos, presentations, and videos - all from their mobile devices, and without having to "pass control" to another participant. NPL enables businesses to create a powerful customer experience by embedding Spin, with its advanced videoconferencing and customer collaboration tools, into their suite of applications and service offerings, as well as to link to social media such as Facebook, fostering significant gains in productivity and customer satisfaction.
Spin leverages cloud architecture, rather than peer-to-peer - an advance that eliminates multiple issues involved in video-based chats and ultimately delivers superior quality of service (QoS). Furthermore, Spin overcomes the many barriers of legacy apps that are force-fit for video collaboration: namely, limitations to one-to-one video calling, the challenges of integrating video with collaboration, and the need to initiate videoconferences from the desktop.
Unlike collaboration applications that connect people over a single channel, Spin uses a proprietary network protocol that differentiates data streams and sends, for example, animations and drawings through one channel, and audio and video through another. The result is a high quality of experience (QoE) in both the fidelity of the communications and the support of simultaneous collaboration activities, such as watching videos, viewing photos, and annotating documents.
Spin-based applications enhance video-based collaboration across multiple industries, dramatically improving workflows in environments where remote communications are critical. Application use cases include:
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Creative Production: Postproduction; publishing; animation; graphic design
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Education: Distance learning; global classrooms; study groups
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Entertainment: Synchronous viewing parties; remote auditions; viewer collaboration
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Financial Services: Equity trading; consultation
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Healthcare: Medical imaging and evaluation by collaboration; patient consultation
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Consumer Electronics: White-label applications for mobile devices, smart TVs and set-top boxes
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Customer Service: Product support and customer service
"We've found the Net Power & Light framework to be incredibly powerful -- the immersive multi-sensory experiences coupled with low-latency communications yield a truly mind-blowing product," said Tamara Childs, Chief Strategist, Conference Call Services, at Ubiquitous Innovation. "We will be incorporating Spin into our day-to-day operations, specifically for the HD videoconferencing and document and media sharing features, to enable better collaboration with our remote teams."
A Video-centric Architecture for Collaboration
With 18 patents issued to date, the Spin platform uses proprietary layered architecture and a low-latency network protocol to intelligently prioritize and deliver computing and networking resources, ensuring application responsiveness, full content synchronization, and extremely low-latency, real-time communications. The result is a highly interactive environment that prioritizes multiple data streams, or "layers," from computing and network resources and composes and synchronizes them as one single-layered experience. All refinements are achieved without altering the original stream, protecting the originator's intellectual property, and ensuring compliance with DRM (Digital Rights Management) guidelines.
Because of its layered architecture and low-latency technology, Spin is unlike any other mobile video communications experience. Online meetings and video calling are no longer limited to conversations and simple screen sharing. With Spin, ten people in a videoconference can view and collaborate on a document, swipe through photos with full interactivity, and watch videos together -- perfectly in sync. Spin sessions are rendered in retina-quality HD video and 44kHz CD-quality audio, creating an experience so close to human fidelity that it's easy for users to forget the distance and devices between them.
While traditional screen-sharing solutions compromise the quality of the collaborative experience, Spin lets all users participate and control the experience equally.
Spin features include:
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Initiation of a videoconference directly from a mobile device
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Dropbox integration and support for viewing PDF documents within a Spin gathering
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Comments feature to add group notes to a Spin gathering
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Screenshot feature to save comments and markups to the local device's camera roll
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Encryption and deletion of shared content
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Dialing ringtones for more reliable connectivity with colleagues
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Call messaging, enabling users to leave a message via email
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Facebook integration and single sign-on supports one-tap ability to log in to Spin and to discover and invite Facebook friends directly to a Spin session
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A network indicator alerting users to weak Wi-Fi or cellular signals
"Business collaboration is the Holy Grail of enterprise environments," said Thomas Engdahl, CEO of Net Power & Light. "Hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and development have been poured into collaboration applications, but virtually all fall short based on their one-dimensional approach or feature limitations. Spin's unique architecture not only supports mobile devices, but also allows multiple users to collaborate in multiple ways at once. Our users believe that Spin ushers in a new generation of collaboration, offering rich experiences that go beyond traditional screen-sharing approaches such as Skype and Google Hangouts."
A New Model for Cloud-based Application Streaming
Complementing Spin is NPL Beam™, NPL's proprietary, low-latency network protocol that enables streaming of applications from the cloud to client devices. Using Beam, enterprise users can deploy virtualized apps that run from the cloud, dramatically simplifying desktop software and mobile application deployments for BYOD employees, remote workers, contractors, and partners.
Beam can also be deployed within Spin or a white-label application, allowing users to collaborate on applications or projects during a videoconference. With Beam and Spin deployed together, every participant in a videoconference will share the same experience - regardless of what applications are installed on individual devices. For example, companies with a group license for Adobe Photoshop can easily deploy the program across multiple user devices from the backend, allowing users to collaborate on a Photoshop file without the need to download the application.
Scalable Backend Architecture
To meet the needs of enterprise app developers, independent developers, partners and consultants to develop white-label applications on Spin, NPL incorporated a scalable data center system, NPL LUX™, that supports millions of concurrent users. This backend enables NPL to overcome issues found in the peer-to-peer networking approach used by many competitors. With Spin, for example, any device limitations or network constraints of one participant in a videoconference will have no effect on other participants.
NPL offers two ways to integrate its technology. Developers can integrate Spin into their own applications and service offerings, enabling the application to provide feature-rich, branded collaboration tools tailored to the exact needs of specific audiences or markets. Or developers can tie into the code base of the Spin platform, augmenting it to create tailored collaboration apps.
The operating environment incorporates a set of LUX APIs (application programming interfaces) and a comprehensive SDK (software development kit), making it easy for developers to integrate new features into their applications or link Spin to existing applications. NPL also provides custom, nonrecurring engineering services to partners, integrators, and customers. Developers can take advantage of a range of white-label client applications for iOS, as well as NPL-provided client plug-ins for set-top boxes, smart TVs, and other devices.
The Spin platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services' high-performance cloud infrastructure and has been field-tested and proven to support millions of active participants.
Additional Resources
Availability
Spin is available from the Apple Store for iOS devices. For more information or to inquire about partnership or developer opportunities, contact Net Power & Light at http://netpowerandlight.com/contact.
About Net Power & Light
Net Power & Light (NPL) is dedicated to delivering a new kind of powerful technology platform that gives users the freedom and the tools to connect, collaborate, and create more deeply. Founded in 2009, NPL has numerous patented innovations that change the way people experience media, entertainment, and communications. The company's premier product, Spin™, allows users to collaborate and create in a highly immersive environment, and allows developers using the company's powerful LUX™ Network Operating System to develop rich collaboration and media-based applications for business users and consumers. Headquartered in San Francisco, Net Power & Light is backed by investors including Alsop Louie Partners, SingTel Innov8, Peninsula Ventures, and BSkyB. For more information, go to www.netpowerandlight.com.
