Saba Unveils Breakthrough Video Collaboration Platform

March 20, 2012 - PRLog -- Bracknell, UK – Saba , the premier provider of people-centric enterprise solutions, today unveiled Saba Meeting, the industry’s first unified social, mobile and video unified collaboration platform. Saba Meeting (formerly Saba Centra) is the first unified collaboration platform that enables users to view video in high definition (HD) across webinars, virtual meetings or classrooms on mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone. Additionally, when combined with the social capabilities and an embedded people profile within Saba’s new Social Enterprise Platform –  Saba People Cloud  http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/saba-announces-revolutionary-social-enterprise-platform users can collaborate and share knowledge and documents in real-time with other employees, customers and partners. By empowering an organization’s most critical assets— its people— Saba helps organizations be more agile, collaborative, competitive and responsive to market demands.

“In today’s age of collaboration, people want more than to simply share a video screen. The future of Web conferencing needs to support both synchronous and asynchronous interactions and enable a rich environment that integrates with other people processes,” said Shawn Farshchi, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Saba. “Saba Meeting is game changing for the Web conferencing industry. No other platform has such robust integrated collaboration capabilities, HD video, and anytime access on mobile devices, while being highly extensible.”

In a recent Gartner report, “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing," analyst David Mario Smith noted, “The worlds of social media, collaboration and enterprise applications are starting to merge, bringing real-time capabilities to business processes and personal productivity applications. Web conferencing vendors that fail to adapt and cannot ensure integration with adjacent markets will find it a challenge to compete in the long term amid this convergence.”(1) Saba is addressing this need by introducing the only truly unified collaboration platform that combines video, real-time collaboration and mobile to increase levels of engagement and support the new way of work.

“Increasingly we are being required to look for more effective ways to share knowledge across the organization, yet often times people are working from home or on the road,” said John Kozyra, network support specialist, Contact North. “The ability to access HD quality video remotely is a huge benefit for our organization and the real-time collaboration features creates a more engaging environment that optimizes knowledge sharing.”

Key Highlights of Saba Meeting:
•Video in High Definition: The only real-time collaboration platform offering highly scalable integrated HD video, voice-over-IP (VOIP) and content sharing for instant real-time meetings, webinars and virtual classes. Saba Meeting allows for richer interaction and collaboration in vivid detail using just a webcam and internet connection, with support for eight simultaneous live video feeds.  
•Scalable without Limiting Bandwidth:  Saba Meeting’s satellite architecture enables Web conferencing traffic to be routed efficiently across a company’s WAN, quelling bandwidth concerns tied to increased use of the platform and adoption of HD video.
•Optimized for Mobile: Viewing on mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone, through a native application, enables users to access training or learning materials on the go. The new intuitive interface enables high interactivity and engagement, allowing users to not only attend the session but present and collaborate unwired.
•Powerful Social Collaborative Workspaces:   Combines Social networking capabilities, groups and activity streams with unified communication and real-time collaboration capabilities such as HD Video, IM Chat and VoIP – to any online meeting, webinar or virtual classes. Users can also effectively collaborate before, during and after virtual meetings.
•Sharable Real-time Content: Simplifies the process of capturing, sharing and accessing valuable knowledge. To increase the ROI of live sessions, video recordings can be easily stored and published in YouTube-like video channels in the Saba’s Social Enterprise Platform, the Saba people Cloud, for future access from any device.
•Comprehensive set of Open APIs (application programming interfaces): Equipped with the industry’s most extensive set of Web services for embedding real-time collaboration capabilities into business processes, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Learning Management and Sales Force Automation software.
•Intuitive User Interface: Intuitive new browser-based interface, requires no software download, allows users to conduct meetings, webinars and classrooms across any platform including Mac, Linux, and Windows. Easy-to-use features including emoticons and in-session presence indicators allow for increased engagement and interactivity for meeting attendees.

Availability and Pricing
Saba Meeting is currently in beta and is expected to be generally available starting in April 2012. To join the beta program for Saba Meeting, visit www.sabameeting.com.

Current Saba Centra customers will be able to seamlessly migrate to the new software when it becomes available.

(1)Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing", David Mario Smith, 5 December 2011

Supporting Resources
•Visit Saba: http://www.saba.com
•Follow the Saba blog: http://www.saba.com/blogs/
•Follow Saba on Twitter: @SabaSoftware

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Saba  enables organizations to build a transformative workplace that leverages the advent of social networking in business and the ubiquity of mobile to empower an organization’s most mission-critical assets – its people. The company provides a set of people-centric enterprise solutions to various businesses and industries worldwide. Saba delivers cloud-based learning management, talent management, and social enterprise solutions to transform the way people work.