Video collaboration has emerged as one of the most important tools in the business landscape today. As workplaces become increasingly distributed, thanks to the rise of hybrid and remote work, employers need a way of synchronizing and aligning their staff to maintain productivity.

Video collaboration allows for more engaging interaction between team members. However, it also opens the door to a new range of customer service opportunities, designed to strengthen human connections and relationships. It’s little wonder the video conferencing market is accelerating towards a predicted value of around $19.73 billion by 2030.

However, for video collaboration device vendors to take advantage of this landscape, they need to be able to build, optimize and deploy their solutions as quickly and effectively as possible. This isn’t easy in a world where video peripherals are evolving at an accelerated speed, and video applications are now separate from the hardware used to access them.

The right CI/CD solution empowers faster time-to-market, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction

The Challenges of CI/CD for Device Vendors

Many video collaboration device vendors already have a strategy in place for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD). These efforts often revolve around rapidly testing different components of hardware, code, and functionality in a video solution. However, as the video landscape evolves, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to accurately test and optimize all of the elements of a video system in-house.

As software vendors and UC platforms continue to roll out new functionality at an incredible rate, a high frequency of small changes can lead to unmanageable levels of testing, building, and deployment activities.

Many device vendors struggle with issues such as:

• Resource distribution: Rapidly implementing CI/CD initiatives can consume a lot of professional resources and time. Without extra help, this can slow time to market.
• Expertise: Some CI/CD efforts require specific in-depth knowledge of a video application software (Teams, Zoom) environment or landscape. Not every company will have the certified staff members they need in-house to ensure exceptional interoperability.
• Slower time to market: When CI/CD initiatives are complex and time-consuming, a company’s ability to deliver new updates and innovations to customers is hampered. This leads to lost opportunities and revenue.

Solving Problems with CI/CD Strategies

Recently, tekVizion worked in collaboration with a major video hardware vendor to assist with scaling testing opportunities and accelerating time to market.  The organization’s collaboration bar technology was experiencing issues, and testing for interoperability and performance with Microsoft Teams was taking longer than expected.

The company had limited bandwidth capabilities to complete tests at speed and lacked the testing environment required to ensure its offering could align seamlessly with Microsoft Teams. Reaching out to tekVizion allowed the organization to access the labs, automation capabilities, skills, and documentation they need to enhance their time to market. The company was equipped to offer rapid third-party testing for video conferencing devices, with the skills and complex testing capabilities critical to the brand’s requirements.

tekVizion 360 Video Collaboration Testing delivered immediate access to a virtual lab, automation platform, and subject matter expert resources, allowing for the rapid and efficient testing of the brand’s video conferencing products. The device manufacturer was able to release 6 new configurations of their 3 room systems, certified for Microsoft Teams, with tekVizion’s assistance.

What’s more, tekVizion rapidly identified an average of 24.5 bugs per release over 30 releases within 6 months. By detecting issues before they were encountered by users, tekVizion helped the company to reduce its support call volume by 90%.

Improving the Customer Experience & Decreasing Internal Burdens

CI/CD testing for video conferencing devices is an important part of rapidly bringing innovative new tools into the growing collaboration landscape. However, having expert testers to ensure they work consistently with popular video technology stacks and software solutions, like Microsoft Teams, can be time-consuming and hard to scale.

Working with a certified testing partner provides companies with the powerful resources, expertise, and guidance they need to accelerate their go-to-market strategy.

With the right partner, companies can ensure their devices work effectively with the most popular tools and software in the video conferencing landscape. Whether your clients use Zoom, RingCentral, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meetings, they want to know their hardware and software will work seamlessly, to enable amazing video experiences.

As an authorized test partner for many of the world’s leading conferencing software solutions, tekVizion helps businesses optimize their CI/CD testing processes and generate measurable results in improving quality.