Vidyo Snags Microsoft UC Veteran For Top Marketing Post

Gupta brings to Vidyo a lengthy UC resume -- as well as deep channel experience -- as the six-year-old company continues its emergence as a videoconferencing and telepresence challenger.

"Ashish Gupta brings a wealth of industry experience to lead Vidyo's marketing and corporate development efforts," said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo's co-founder and CEO, in a statement. "He is a proven and seasoned leader who brings to Vidyo a demonstrated track record and a passion for our business."

At Microsoft, Gupta was a core member of the team that launched Lync, Microsoft's UC suite and the updated version of what was previously Microsoft's Office Communication Server (OCS).

Gupta was most recently leader of business development and strategy for the Unified Communications Group within Microsoft's Office Division, and he previously headed up channel sales and marketing for Microsoft's Real Time Communications Group, among other executive positions.

Before Microsoft, Gupta held vice president-level positions at Alcatel/Genesys Telecommunications, Telera and Braxton/Deloitte Consulting, and as also worked at HP, Covad and OnFiber.

His appointment at Vidyo was effective Jan. 3.

"Vidyo offers a game-changing solution to the age old problem of proprietary and expensive legacy video conferencing systems that has resulted in islands of collaboration within enterprises," Gupta said in a statement. "Vidyo's architecture has a several-year technology lead over legacy systems, is available today, and is being used by marquee customers and partners to deliver unmatched video collaboration solutions."

Vidyo emerged from stealth mode in 2007 and is seen as a challenger to larger UC and video heavyweights like Cisco and Polycom and also less expensive upstarts like LifeSize.

The company continued to fine tune its platform and product offerings throughout 2010, build its channel partner base and ally itself with larger industry players like HP, which OEMs Vidyo's software-based scaleable video coding for its recently debuted Visual Collaboration products.