Enabling a Live Video Experience That’s Powerful and Secure

April 10, 2018 | By Puneet Shetty | Case Studies, Healthcare, New Products and Features, Security

A technical look at the live video security and HIPAA compliance strategies used by leading Telehealth provider InTouch Health.

The most exciting part about building a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is that it caters to a variety of use-cases – from social video apps, eLearning & telehealth platforms, webinars or a disruptive new way of using video to serve a need that we haven’t foreseen yet.

TokBox customers are pioneers in their respective verticals. They are using live video to build powerful and engaging experiences in schools, hospitals and banks. Many of these environments have highly restrictive networks and stringent security requirements that pose challenges that are hard to meet for a multi-tenant cloud provider like OpenTok. We have been working closely with these customers to better understand their requirements and finding innovative ways to serve them.

Bridging Language Barriers: Connecting With Chinese Students on OpenTok

January 9, 2018 | By Donal Toomey | Case Studies, Education, New Products and Features

When I was a kid, the encyclopedia was the entry point for learning about any topic.

Now with Wikipedia, the world’s knowledge is available for anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection. This is great for learning about a great many topics. But what about learning a new language where conversation practice is critical? And what if you want a native speaking tutor? Enter Education Technology (EdTech) live video solutions powered by the OpenTok global infrastructure.

White Paper: How Interactive Live Video Is Making Banking Personal Again

January 13, 2017 | By Eleanor Hermon | Case Studies, Financial Services, White paper

Research continues to prove that more of us than ever and banking online. Studies show that 94% of millennials now conduct their transactional banking entirely online. And it is not just millennials; there are now more people who bank on a smartphone or computer on a weekly basis than who step foot in a branch.

In line with this customer move to online channels, banks are increasingly faced with the dilemma that while customers expect everything to be online, they also are demanding a more personalized service. The friendly face and personal touch from a bank teller – once an integral part of the banking customer experience – have largely been replaced by automation. As a result, banks are looking for solutions to enable them to deliver the level of service they want to online. Many are turning to live video.

This latest white paper explores how interactive live video is ushering in a new era of service in personal banking, the opportunity for banks, as well as best practices for implementing interactive live video into the customer journey.

Click here to download the white paper.

White Paper: Consumers want more than Facetime for Brands

October 26, 2016 | By Eleanor Hermon | Case Studies, The OpenTok Platform, White paper

When it comes to communicating with family and friends, live video has become commonplace, but it has not yet become the norm in business. In order to take advantage of the benefits of live video, companies and brands must find a way to integrate live video into their existing suites.

With rising demand and interest, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to be able to provide live video capabilities to its consumers. This can help create a mutually beneficial relationship between business and customer as service can be provided more conveniently and efficiently.

White paper: The Real-Time Revolution in e-Learning

December 25, 2015 | By Eleanor Hermon | Case Studies, Education, White paper

It is estimated that by 2019 50% of all higher ed classes will be delivered online. So there’s no doubt that education, both in and outside of the classroom, is entering a whole new era.

The first wave of e-Learning impacted education, bringing educational resources online. But the second wave – active e-Learning using technologies like WebRTC – is set to revolutionize it, creating new interactive experiences with communications in context. In the real world, this means that a student in Detroit can now be tutored in calculus by a math teacher in New York or college students at MIT, UCLA, and Oxford collaborate together on an article to be submitted to a renowned academic journal.

Google Helpouts wasn’t helping

April 22, 2015 | By Melih O. | Case Studies, WebRTC

Google shuts down plenty of products. Reader, Glass, Talk, Wave. But the closing down of Helpouts gives particularly valuable lessons for those who are building WebRTC based applications and services for the always on ‘find an expert market’, of which there are many.

While it’s clear that it didn’t get enough traction and had some monetization issues, the real question is why? In healthcare in particular there is a large and growing world of people for whom video communications, powered by WebRTC, is a critical lifeline (literally). This is a world that includes housebound cancer-patients, the blind, recovering drug addicts, time-constrained parents and their community of carers, and healthcare practitioners. A recent report cited 89% of healthcare executives that said they expect telemedicine to transform the U.S. healthcare system in the next decade, with the number of patients using telehealth services growing to 7 million in 2018, up from 350,000 in 2013.

The Royal Bank of Scotland Introduces Video Banking

March 12, 2015 | By Lauren Slattery | Banking, Case Studies, OpenTok API, Partner News, WebRTC

An innovative approach to banking has enabled Coutts and Co in particular to thrive since its inception more than 300 years ago. The bank of choice for Her Majesty The Queen, Coutts has a commitment to continually bring the latest offerings in banking and support for its 70,000 global customers.

As Coutts operates as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) group, ensuring quality of service to its clients worldwide is a top priority. RBS has a heavy focus on innovation and scouts the globe to identify companies and technologies that may be of service to the bank and its customers needs.

A new kind of hackathon

January 16, 2013 | By Song Zheng | Case Studies, Developer, Events

Last weekend we had the pleasure of sponsoring University Hacker Olympics. Unlike your typical hackathons, this one emphasized connecting University students with industry professionals.

Personally, I thought the event was innovative in the field of recruiting. In the traditional interview process, sometimes great candidates were dismissed because their shyness or nervousness inhibited them from performing. 1-1 interviews can be intimidating, we’ve all been there. From the interviewer’s perspective, asking candidates to solve problems does not provide any valuable insight into how pleasant it would be to work with them in a working environment.

How WorldWide Virtual Theater Carrousel used OpenTok

May 26, 2011 | By Lauren Slattery | Case Studies, OpenTok API, Partner News

Guest Post

Sering is a community based theater company that sets up cultural projects for schools. They share their knowledge with other theater companies around the world. Although they make use of internet to communicate, they couldn’t find a solution that fitted their needs. They wanted a social platform that allows small groups of admins to work distribute initial content and let the project grow through a large number of participants.

Existing tools like e.g. Basecamp were found too complex in setup. So we (duall.be and skylight.be) built a custom solution for them that fitted their needs and named it a “virtual office”. One of the many requests was the ability to organize a grouped video chat between the project managers and the participants. And with that -since it’s a global community of children and adults who don’t necessarily speak each other languages- the ability to automatically translate text-chat to the users language.