Jupiter Systems unveils Canvas; multipoint visual collaboration
Jupiter Systems announced this morning Canvas, a new multi-point video system for the enterprise that it says helps improve collaboration in the enterprise.
The new client-server application "allows users in the control room, across campus, and around the world to see, share, annotate and collaborate on video and desktop streams," the company says. Target customers include traffic management centers, public transportation agencies, electrical and water utilities, private and public security, law enforcement, emergency operations centers, telecom and data NOCs, petroleum producers and refiners and manufacturing operations.
As workforces become more global and dispersed, Jupiter hopes that Canvas comes in handy to tie them together. The system allows users to share video streams and captured desktop streams over an enterprise network, doing away with conventional video display walls limited to a single physical location.
"At the traditional display wall, operators, managers and others can review and analyze information together and determine what action to take, but they must all be in the same room at the same time," Jupiter's Brady Bruce said. "Canvas moves beyond those limits on participation.”
Canvas is the next logical step for the company, which has long-offered software to display a Windows PC's desktop on a video wall. A neat trick, sure -- but as mobility takes over the enterprise, a way to network those visuals becomes far more important.
Why called "Canvas," you ask? The system displays information as a sharable collage of visual objects, e.g. video and desktop streams.
It also allows for manipulation. With Canvas, managers at multiple locations can channel their inner John Maddens to make annotations directly on moving video. Whiteboards can also be created for brainstorming sessions.
To avoid sharing the unsharable, Canvas comes with roles and object-level security for all sources, so a permitted viewer will be able to watch a certain object while a non-permitted user gets a blank slate.
The company's mum on the price -- contact them for details -- but insists that all versions are fully featured, suggesting that the scheme is based on number of users, not features.