HACKENSACK, NJ- August 4, 2011 -Vidyo, Inc.,  the first company to deliver personal telepresence, announced today the appointments of James (Jim) Fairweather to a newly created position, VP Worldwide Channels and Mark Reid, to the position as Sr. Director of Engineering at Vidyo.  Both Fairweather and Reid join Vidyo from HP's Visual Collaboration Business Unit after longer tenures at Polycom where they were focused on video conferencing and telepresence. Fairweather is responsible for driving worldwide channel revenue and recruitment and reports to Rob Hughes, Vidyo SVP of WW Sales. Reid focuses on new solution delivery models and reports to Roi Sasson, Vidyo SVP of Engineering.  

"The video conferencing market has matured; customers today are sophisticated and no longer willing to settle for expensive, inflexible, hard to use, legacy-based hardware systems," said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo CEO and co-founder.  "Industry veterans like Jim Fairweather, who ran video conferencing sales at HP and Polycom and was the driving force behind multiple $30M+ deals, and Mark Reid, who led video conferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration engineering teams, keenly understand the architectural shift that Vidyo is driving in the market. I am pleased to welcome them both to the Vidyo team."

Jim Fairweather joins Vidyo from HP where he was Vice President, Worldwide Sales for the HP Visual Collaboration (VC) Business Unit and grew HP's VC revenue, established direct and channel sales plans, and recruited strategic distributors and channels. Prior to his tenure at HP, Jim was Vice President, North America & US Sales, at Polycom, where he managed a business unit contributing over half of the company's revenue and led  400+ sales professionals.  Other positions held by Jim included Vice President, Americas Sales at PictureTel Corporation and VP & Managing Director of Sales and Marketing, International Public Sector Group, MCI Worldcom.  Jim completed the Executive Management Program at the University of Michigan and holds a BS in Accounting from Bentley University.

"I have experienced Vidyo closely for the past few years as both a competitor and a direct seller, while at HP," said Jim Fairweather, Vidyo VP of Worldwide Channels.  "Vidyo's software-based platform is unmatched in the industry.  I believe Vidyo's highly flexible SVC-based architecture is the future standard for all of video conferencing, especially after witnessing the acceptance of this solution in the Global 2000. I am thrilled to lead worldwide channel recruitment and development for Vidyo."

Mark Reid served as Senior Director of Engineering for HP's Visual Collaboration Business Unit where he developed product strategy and led a 100-person engineering department driving multiple telepresence and collaboration lines.  Prior to his position at HP, Mark was Senior Director of Engineering for Polycom's Telepresence and Vertical Solutions Division where he developed product strategy, and led a 35-person engineering department that drove two vertical solutions, four distinct telepresence products and numerous high profile custom products.  Other positions held by Mark include Vice President Engineering at NMS Communications, Xelor Software, First Virtual Communications, as well as engineering positions at CMGI, VideoServer, Inc., and PictureTel Corporation.  Mark also was a key contributor to the development of the H.323 standard and an editor of the H.245 recommendation. Mark holds an MSEE in Communications and Signal Processing from Northeastern University, and a BS in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University.

 "With the  explosion of mobile devices and the need for service provider partners to deliver cloud-based visual collaboration solutions that can scale, market requirements have changed," said Mark Reid, Vidyo Sr. Director of Engineering, "Vidyo's software-based platform with the Adaptive Video Layering architecture  is uniquely positioned to power the next generation of collaborative applications due to its ability to accelerate time to market while simultaneously providing a disruptive cost and performance profile at scale."

About Vidyo, Inc.

Vidyo, Inc. pioneered Personal Telepresence enabling natural, HD multi-point videoconferences on tablets and smart phones, PCs and Macs, room systems, gateways that interoperate with H.323 and SIP endpoints, telepresence solutions and affordable cloud-based broadcast solutions.  Learn more at www.vidyo.com, on the Blog or follow @vidyo on Twitter.