| Industry | Telecommunications software and services |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California (United States) |
| Key people | Larry Dorie (Founder and Chief Executive Officer); John Mao (Founder) |
| Products | TurboMeeting 200; TurboMeeting 500; TurboMeeting 1000. |
| Employees | ~10+ (July 2010) |
| Website | www.rhubcom.com |
RHUB Communications Inc. is a maker of web conferencing and videoconferencing systems. The company has business ties with the Japanese company Hitachi and other international groups.[1]
Contents |
RHUB was founded in 2005[2] by its current CEO Larry Dorie, a veteran sales executive then working as an advisor at the Enterprise Network of Silicon Valley,[3] and John Mao, an engineer and scientist who was working on a new web conferencing technology that would be usable and affordable by everyone. The pair invested a total of $100,000 of their own funds into building the company. To date, they have not taken any outside funding.[4]
The company has won several awards for their products including becoming the winner of the Network Products Guide’s 2008 Best Products and Services Award for Best in Communications and Collaboration with their most acknowledged product from IT reviewers, the TurboMeeting 500.[5] In addition, Information Technology industry publication Channel News chose RHUB as one of its “five new kids on the networking block” in 2009.[6]
In 2008 it was announced that Packetel, Inc., a web conferencing solutions provider, became one of RHUB Communications’ new U.S-based channel partners.[7]
The company also made headlines when the Novia Scotia Department of Justice chose them for its conferencing needs after finding out that most web collaboration providers route traffic via U.S.-based servers, a violation of the province’s data routing and handling.[6] [8]
In July 2010 RHUB was chosen by Hitachi Ltd to help beef us the Japanese giant’s teleconferencing line. The company added its TurboMeeting to Hitachi’s products. Financial terms of the Hitachi deal were not disclosed, but the deal was revealed to have a potential worth in the high six figures amount over three years if the product performs at the level Hitachi has expected.
“We are committed to delivering high quality conferencing solutions for enterprise markets, and with RHUB's technology, we have built a web conferencing solution which provides the image quality and performance that gives us a leading position in this competitive market,” said Toru Ishikawa, manager of Hitachi’s Telecommunications & Network Systems Division.[4]
The company provides a collaboration solution for on-premise applications and offers an installation solution on personal networks which can integrate into other systems and make meetings more secure. One of RHUB’s most well known products since 2008 has been the TurboMeeting 500.[9]
TurboMeeting is a hardware-based solution that acts like a server for the applications that enable conferencing, remote control and other peer-to-peer or one-to-many connections. TurboMeeting combines four applications into one appliance: Web conferencing, webinars, remote support and remote access. The product works by “pushing” a client application down to the PC, very similar to what WebEX or GoToMeeting does but for less. Once that client application is up and running, all activity takes place via the client application, which integrates into the user's web browser. For the most part, everything is automatic.[10]
While the company declines to discuss specific revenue figures, the company has reported growth in its revenue from 2008 to 2009 by 160 percent.[6]
The company has become well known in the IT field for offering an in-premise solution with a hardware-based appliance that competes against both installed and online Web collaboration offerings including Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, Cisco Systems’ WebEx, Citrix GoToMeeting, Oracle Corp.’s Beehive, IBM Corp.’s Lotus Sametime and a number solutions from other startups.[7] [11]