Oblong Industries introduces a series of Mezzanine enterprise visual collaboration tools

Oblong Industries believes it has come up with a way to improve visual collaboration, and now it’s launching a series of products under its Mezzanine brand to increase adoption by enterprises.

Los Angeles-based Oblong raised $65 million in funding to build technologies that will make collaborative work much easier. Oblong is combining spatial, immersive, and gesture technologies — developed by company CEO John Underkoffler, who was the science advisor for the Tom Cruise film Minority Report. (He was also a speaker on future user interfaces at our recent GamesBeat Summit 2017 event.)

Underkoffler helped create the gesture controls and “data gloves” in the sci-fi film Minority Report in 2002. He founded Oblong Industries in 2006 and launched Mezzanine (a version of the Minority Report gesture controls for enterprise collaborators) in 2012.

Oblong makes the Mezzanine product for immersive visual collaboration and data visualization, and it does so on an “architectural scale,” meaning it works with your building design and uses its unique “g-speak” technology. G-speak software enables multi-machine, device-agnostic spatial operating environments with simultaneous gesture and touch inputs.

Above: John Underkoffler has high hopes for the user interfaces of the future.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

And now the company is launching an expanded range of products under the Mezzanine name. Those hardware and software products will drive the entry price point for a full Mezzanine solution below $50,000.

Mezzanine offers high-performance collaboration for rooms of all sizes, from small and medium-size teamwork spaces to the largest executive briefing centers. New nomenclature makes it easier for customers and integrator partners to zero in on the most appropriate Mezzanine solution for their particular use case, team composition, workflow needs, and physical space. Full details will be revealed at Infocomm 2017, the largest audio visual conference in the U.S.

The products range from the Mezzanine 200 at the low end to Mezzanine 650 at the high end.

“We take pride in our culture of continual innovation and responsiveness to our customers’ needs,” said Underkoffler, in a statement. “To meet the demand for more flexible solutions, we’ve evolved the Mezzanine product family to provide a full range of offerings to the market. We’re especially excited to introduce the 200 Series and its more accessible price tag, as well as features like Mezzanine platform integration with Skype for Business. The newly expanded Mezzanine portfolio enables more people in the workplace to benefit from Oblong’s technology and become more creative, collaborative, and productive.”

Oblong’s customers include NASA, PwC, IBM, Fujitsu, and Accenture, along with other forward-thinking Fortune 500 companies. A commissioned study by Forrester found that Mezzanine pays for itself in less than eight months and offers a return on investment (ROI) of 226 percent in 3 years.