Lifesize Kaptivo Deal Brings Virtual Whiteboards to Life
As Covid-19 drives corporations into cyberspace, videoconferencing platform Lifesize is adding digital whiteboards to its virtual meeting rooms with the purchase of Kaptivo.
Kaptivo, a former client of Acuity Advisors, has created a cloud-connected camera that captures whiteboard content and streams it to any device. This brings the in-person whiteboard experience online, and is used by the likes of Deloitte, Atlassian, and Stanford University to send digitised drawings and diagrams over the internet and communicate visually as if everyone was in the same room.
With the additional functionality of Kaptivo, Lifesize will boost its toolkit enabling advanced forms of collaboration, chipping away at the limitations of cyberspace.
“Kaptivo is a natural addition to the Lifesize platform, and its unique technology and talented team will allow us to accelerate our rate of innovation while simultaneously delivering new value to customers,” said CEO of Lifesize Craig Malloy. “We look forward to rapidly expanding our advanced collaboration offering and helping organizations work, engage, teach and learn more naturally and effectively, from wherever they are.”
Lifesize itself was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners in March, and merged with Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) platform Serenova to build out cross-channel functionality supporting voice, email, chat, SMS and social media.
With the Kaptivo purchase, Lifesize continues to build out capabilities supporting its vision of the future, matching an industry-wide trend of increased investment in Cloud and other next generation technologies including Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The spread of Covid has accelerated this trend, leading to a string of acquisitions across the market – from Zoom making its first ever acquisition in May with encrypted messaging startup Keybase, to Verizon buying BlueJeans for $500 million shortly afterwards.
Most recently in August, Apple broke into the segment with the acquisition of Spaces – a virtual reality startup that places digital avatars into videoconferences.
