Vidyo raises $17m for enterprise videoconferencing

There has always been some degree of dissonance around videoconferencing. As vendors promise it to be the new way to collaborate, we keep on using e-mail, phones and instant messages anyway.

That's not the case for everyone, as it turns out.

A new $17.1 million investment in Vidyo, the Hackensack, N.J.-based company founded in 2005, is some proof that there's money in them hills. The round, led by Silicon Valley venture firm Triangle Peak Partners, brings the company's total capital raised to $116 million. 

The company plans to use the funding to boost its sales, expand its global footprint (half of the company's 2012 billings were outside the U.S.) and otherwise continue pushing its VidyoWorks platform. But the real takeaway here is that businesses are indeed spending money on telepresence technologies, particularly the "multi-point" variety that allow for mobile devices, desktops and conference rooms to work together seamlessly.

Vidyo says it saw 68 percent year-over-year billings growth in 2012, with notable traction in the government, healthcare, education and "large enterprise" markets. Why? "We are experiencing a hockey stick effect in the adoption of the personal video conferencing market that continues to drive significant growth for Vidyo," Vidyo co-founder and CEO Ofer Shapiro said.

Its customers are expanding deployments at 18 percent per quarter, Vidyo says, so something's obviously working.

So while videoconferencing might not supplant your overstuffed inbox (sorry), there are use cases in which it's much, much better. Like in the classroom, operating room or boardroom.