Magor brings visual conversations to the cloud with Aerus

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada, March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Magor Corporation (TSX Venture: MCC) today introduced Aerus, the next stage in the evolution of its market-leading visual collaboration product. Aerus extends Magor's peer-to-peer software architecture to the cloud, delivering a unique approach in cloud-based service platforms.

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Magor's cloud-based Aerus platform enables people to engage collaboratively in high-quality visual conversations by simultaneously sharing, viewing and editing relevant material on desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, whiteboards and other devices.

With a scalable distributed server architecture that leverages switched video networking, Aerus is designed to solve limitations of traditional video conferencing implementations that use a centralized architecture and impose a "meet-me" model for all interactions with more than two locations for any type of environment – meeting room, desktop, mobile and more.

Traditional bridge-based services also cannot scale easily and cost effectively to meet the needs of larger deployments that require support for a mix of mobile, desktop and room-based endpoints as well as for screen sharing and collaborative document editing.

Aerus fulfills a forecast by Scott Morrison, an authoritative Gartner analyst. In an August 2012 report entitled "Market Trends: Videoconferencing, Worldwide, 2012," Morrison wrote: "Future demand for video infrastructure is predicated on far-reaching changes to the current architecture and commercialization of these solutions, from hardware to software and from capital investment to cloud-based delivery."

Key characteristics of the Aerus platform include:

• Built around a highly flexible workflow model that does not impose a "meet-on-the -bridge" model for calls with more than two locations.
• Designed for clear, high-definition video over the Internet.
• Simple to deploy.
• Interoperable with SIP and H.323-based video-conferencing systems and bridges, consumer-based video conferencing clients, such as Skype, and WebRTC-enabled web browsers.
• Highly scalable in hosted or virtualized environments, enabling third-party Aerus service providers to support elasticity of user demand.
• Has API support over REST for use in custom designed solutions.
• Extends support for flexible payment models, such as monthly recurring charges.

"Our goal with Aerus is to support the many ways people want to work together with video. To do this we chose to deliver an architecture that supports as many different workflows as users want, when users want them, rather than the rigid single workflow model that traditional video conferencing systems box the user into – invite-only, meet-me-on-the-bridge," said Ken Davison, Magor's Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of Sales.

"Aerus allows users to collaborate in visual conversations -- whether spontaneous or scheduled
-- and share whatever material they need to as the context of a conversation progresses," Davison added.  "Thanks to this flexibility, we believe very strongly that Aerus will pave the way to enabling a multitude of video-enabled business processes that have not been addressable with traditional forms of video conferencing." 

Instead of needing to choose between using a rigid presentation mode in video conferencing or adding a web conferencing service to enable collaboration, Aerus users can share the content on their PCs or laptops, as well as content from whiteboards, iPads, databases and other data sources concurrently with all others in the visual conversation. In addition, all participants can also see, take control and modify any or all data sources in a visual conversation for true collaboration.

Aerus also provides native interoperability with existing solutions ranging from traditional room-based video conferencing to web-based consumer clients such as Skype. Furthermore, the Aerus service extends visual collaboration to WebRTC enabled browsers for ultra-simple connectivity.

"We chose Magor because Aerus provided the flexibility to integrate real-time translation services into a very high quality video-enabled collaborative environment, and because the distributed cloud architecture will help expand our video deployment easily," said Rick Martel, director of information technology at the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. "We have been an Aerus customer for six months now and our use has grown exponentially as we find new situations every day by which we can leverage the system."

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting, and a longtime observer of the business video-communications market, said: "I'm encouraged by the Aerus announcement as it reinforces Magor's focus on flexible workflow, rather than the rigid single workflow model enforced by conferencing. Aerus thus brings a new dimension to Enterprise Video Collaboration -- a fluid workflow model that enables what I refer to as Visual Conversations."

Aerus will be generally available on May 1, 2013, with advanced participation open for enterprises wanting to trial the service. For more information please visit http://www.magorcorp.com/aerus-trial/.

For more information, visit Magor at http://www.magorcorp.com/.

About Magor:
Magor is a visual collaboration company. It allows users the freedom to work together naturally anytime, regardless of location, network or device to solve business challenges. Magor's cloud-based Aerus platform enables people to engage in high-quality visual conversations by simultaneously sharing, viewing and editing relevant collaborative material on desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphone applications, whiteboards and other devices.

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SOURCE Magor Corporation