by Jim Lundy

Avaya has more capabilities in video than many people know. A few years ago, it bought a company called Radvision, and that purchase is one of the reasons that Avaya Spaces has such good video meeting capabilities. However, that was then, and this is now. And recently, Avaya announced it has enhanced its Spaces offering even further via partnership with NVIDIA. This blog discusses the new Avaya Spaces and its new AI capabilities.

Avaya Partners with NVIDIA to Power Next Generation of Avaya Spaces

It was in a call the other week when I first noticed the extremely smooth video in an Avaya Spaces meeting. When I asked the Avaya team about it, they said, “oh yes, this is our new AI-powered Avaya Spaces.” They went on to explain the new solution, which is being rolled out in conjunction with the new NVIDIA Maxine video enhancement solution.

My take on the new AI-powered Avaya Spaces is that the meeting was extremely smooth. The richness and the quality of the visuals along with being able to see each participant clearly jumped out at me immediately. Part of the reason for this was that Avaya spaces is using a different compression technique that is apparently smoother than the current H.264.

Avaya products have been competing with solutions like Webex and the Zoom meeting some time—the new online meeting software upgrades Spaces to leverage AI for richer video conferencing services.

What is NVIDIA Maxine?

NVIDIA is all about running AI faster via its GPUs. It is doing this with its new Maxine service, which is a new way of compressing video automatically with such speed that users don’t notice it actually happening. Essentially, Maxine has ability to recognize each person’s outline in a video meeting and then render it and compress it for easier transmission. It can also to extrapolate it to higher resolutions on the fly.

NVIDIA Maxine Reduces Video Bandwidth Consumption by 90%

NVIDIA is claiming it can reduce bandwidth consumption by up to 90% as compared to the current H.264 codec. This is a large claim, but it shows the power of advanced GPU-based computing, combined with a modern compression algorithm. Aragon also feels that this innovative move by NVIDIA is what will help the industry get to higher resolutions, including 4K, which has been held back due to the large amount of bandwidth required.

There is a lot more that Maxine can do, but right out of the gate Avaya’s showcase of the new capabilities has put the rest of the industry on notice.

Bottom Line

Avaya just enhanced Spaces and it did so ahead of just about every other UCC provider out there. We expect others to follow suit. Suffice to say, NVIDIA Maxine will be one of the biggest innovations that has come to video in years. There is lots more to discuss here, but you should be asking your provider what their plans are for AI-based video meetings.