Lifesize was founded by Craig Malloy and Michael Kenoyer in January 2003. It operated in “stealth mode” under the name KMV Technologies from 2003 to 2005. Investors in Lifesize included Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Pinnacle Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital. The company name change to Lifesize Communications was unveiled at the Interoptrade show in Las Vegas, Nevada in May 2005. This is also when Lifesize announced its first product, Lifesize Room, which was the first high definition video conferencing endpoint brought to market. Craig Malloy was a product manager at VTEL Corporation in Austin until 1996, when he left and founded ViaVideo. ViaVideo was acquired by Polycom in 1998. Malloy was the senior vice president and general manager of the Video Communication Division of Polycom through 2002, when he left to found his own high definition video telecommunications company. In 2009, Logitech acquired Lifesize for US$405 million in cash. Lifesize then became "Lifesize, a division of Logitech," but continued to operate as a separate division led by Craig Malloy as its Chief Executive Officer. Malloy served as the Lifesize CEO from 2003 – 2012, and resumed the role in February 2014. Lifesize was spun out of Logitech in early 2016 and is privately owned. In March 2020, Lifesize announced a merger with Serenova, a contact centre-as-a-service provider.
Technology
Lifesize is a Video Conferencing and Collaboration business, based in Austin, Texas, that provides technology for face-to-face communications, including high definition videoconferencing, sometimes known as telepresence. Lifesize was the first video conferencing company to bring high definition video communication technology to market in 2005. Lifesize product portfolio includes high definition endpoints and accessories, NAT\firewall traversal, touchscreen conference room phones, ISDN gateways, Multipoint Control Units and management systems, as well as mobile video conferencing software and a cloud-based IaaS offering for video conferencing. Lifesize also offers a recording and sharing service called Lifesize Cloud Amplify. In 2016, Lifesize brought new huddle room systems to the market with Smartframing camera technology embedded.
