Exclusive: Salesforce Invests In Video Messaging Startup (And Skype Rival) VSee

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

VSee, a video collaboration service provider, has received a capital injection from Salesforce, TechCrunch has learned. The amount was not disclosed, but we’ve been informed that the investment amounted to ‘multiple millions of dollars’.

Coinciding with the investment announcement, the company today announced the upcoming release of ‘One-Click Collaboration’, which it calls a ‘no install experience’ that instantly starts a rich video collaboration session between distributed users.

VSee offers a service that supports multiparty video calling, application/desktop sharing and file transfers over the Web. See video below for a demo.

The startup’s CEO, Milton Chen, says this concept of ‘One-click Collaboration’ combines the scalability and performance of p2p approaches such as Skype with the no-install simplicity of web technologies like Flash, overcoming the limitations of both.

The service will be released for general availability in July 2011.

The company says it already provides services to more than 6,000 enterprises worldwide, including Shell, Intel, Primerica, U.S. Navy SEALs and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

It currently only runs on Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

VSee was founded in 2008 following Chen’s human-computer interaction PhD research at Stanford University. Aside from Salesforce, In-Q-Tel has invested in the business.

Also worth noting: Chen is one of the authors of the XMPP video standard.

Earlier this year, Salesforce announced that it had acquired DimDim, a web conferencing service, for $31 million in cash.

Company: VSee Lab, Inc
Website: vsee.com
Launch Date: 2008

VSee aims to create a commute-free world by making remote work as simple and satisfying as being there in person. VSee is a secure peer-to-peer video collaboration tool that makes remote work less lonely and more productive. It allows instant multi-party videochat, application-share and file transfer in one simple tool that works on any network. Backed by Salesforce.com and In-Q-Tel, VSee serves more than 6000 enterprises including Shell, Intel, NASA, Yahoo, NTT Data, Saudi Aramco, Primerica, Navy SEALs and the...

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Company: Salesforce
Website: salesforce.com
Launch Date: 1999
IPO: February 7, 2004, NYSE:CRM

Salesforce is an enterprise cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. The company is best known for its on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, and went public in June 2004. Salesforce has been a pioneer in developing enterprise platforms through its innovative AppExchange directory of on-demand applications, and its Force.com “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) API for extending Salesforce.

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