Newrow Acquired by Kaltura

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 01/28/20

A company that has made a name for itself in lecture capture and web streaming has acquired another company that provides similar services.

Kaltura announced that it has purchased Newrow, which provides functionality for developing and managing virtual classrooms, online courses and webinars. The price of the deal has not been disclosed.

Kaltura said the acquisition would "expand its footprint" in the video conferencing and virtual meeting space. Both companies serve higher education and K-12. Among Newrow's academic customers are the University of South Florida and Yale. (Kaltura is also used at those institutions.)

According to the acquiring company, the combination of Kaltura and Newrow will deliver "a new meeting experience" for town-hall communications, internal collaboration, learning and training, external meetings and presentations and webinars.

The combined solution, referred to as the "Kaltura Meeting Experience," lets groups of people brainstorm using a collaborative digital whiteboard, split into smaller discussion groups in virtual breakout rooms, share videos in a synchronous high-quality playback, take meeting notes together and take live quizzes. Meeting hosts control the experience. Recordings of those live session can then be "enriched, edited, analyzed and … provided as on-demand materials for use across the organization," Kaltura noted.

"The massive video market continues to grow at a staggering rate, as video infiltrates the modern workplace specifically, and our lives, in general," said Melissa Webster, program vice president for content and digital media technologies at IDC, in a statement. "Kaltura has uniquely positioned itself to address the continuum of real-time, live and [video on demand] needs. With the Newrow acquisition, Kaltura is bringing video-conferencing technology in-house, to further capitalize on the huge addressable market for meeting solutions."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • laptop and fish hook

    Security Firm Identifies Generative AI 'Vishing' Attack

    A new report from Ontinue's Cyber Defense Center has identified a complex, multi-stage cyber attack that leveraged social engineering, remote access tools, and signed binaries to infiltrate and persist within a target network.

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • teacher

    6 Policy Recommendations for Incorporating AI in the Classroom

    The Southern Regional Education Board's Commission on AI in Education has published six recommendations for states on adopting artificial intelligence in schools, colleges, and universities. The guidance marks the commission's first release since it was established last February, with more recommendations planned in the coming year.

  • various technology icons including a cloud, AI chip, and padlock shield above a laptop displaying charts and cloud data

    AI-Focused Data Security Report Identifies Cloud Governance Gaps

    A new Varonis data security report notes that excessive permissions and AI-driven risks are leaving cloud environments dangerously exposed.