HP SkyRoom to rival Skype and Webex

It's generally known, that Hewlett-Packard produces the complex telepresence and collaboration system Halo. It costs almost half a million dollars and occupies a whole conference room. But as the rich customers die out, HP is going to target the small business market with its new HP SkyRoom. It's a p2p application (like Skype) for videoconferencing and collaboration. Unlike Skype it supports up to 4 concurrent users that can share video, documents, applications, 3d-content, files, streaming video and whiteboard. SkyRoom is a business-class system. First, video quality and screen-sharing speed is very high. Of course, it requires a powerful computer and broad internet channel (at least Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 2 GB, 1Mbit channel). Second, it provides a high level of security by encrypting all streams of media—audio, video, and data.

Unlike Webex, SkyRoom can support multiple monitors. I.e. you can see your co-workers on one screen and shared document or application on another. SkyRoom has no inbuilt text chat and online status indication, but can be smoothly integrated with MS Office Communications Server and Jabber for these needs. To plan a meeting, it can create appointments in MS Outlook.

Of course, it's not a freeware, but it's rather affordable. One-user SkyRoom license costs $149 (one time fee). Yes, it's more expansive than Skype's $0, but cheaper than Webex's $59 per month.