Juniper Networks Invests In Video Conferencing Startup Vidyo, Bringing Total Funding To $97M

Video conferencing startup Vidyo announced Tuesday that it has received a strategic investment from Juniper Networks as part of the network equipment vendor’s Junos Innovation Fund. The funding comes alongside existing Vidyo investors such as QuestMark Partners, Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Star Ventures, and Four Rivers Group.

Vidyo makes video conferencing software that allows organizations to very efficiently and effectively make and receive video calls across any number of connected devices. Its video compression technology is based on H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which can be used to deploy high-quality video conferencing, even on constrained mobile networks.

The company sells some video conferencing equipment directly to enterprises, but it also has a large and growing OEM business, with partners such as HP, Google, Ricoh, Hitachi and others licensing the technology to put in their own products.

The Juniper investment could signal either a possible acquisition at some point in the future — or at the very least a much closer partnership, which could mean integrating Vidyo’s video conferencing technology directly into its networking equipment.

Juniper partnerships and strategic investments that have turned into acquisitions include Ankeena, which was also part of the Junos portfolio before the network equipment manufacturer acquired it outright in 2010. Juniper also integrated the technology of Packet Design, another company in its portfolio, into its networking equipment. And Juniper was rumored to be looking to buy portfolio company Cotendo before it was acquired by CDN competitor Akamai.

Vidyo is headquartered in Hackensack, NJ, but has 12 other offices and 225 employees worldwide. While terms of the Juniper funding weren’t disclosed, they bringing total money raised to $97 million since being founded in 2005.