Polycom Solution Addresses Modern Communication and Collaboration Challenges of Distributed Organisations

Polycom delivers first standards-based solution combining visual communication, video streaming and video collaboration to help organisations operate more effectively across distances

16 Mar 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, today announced the first, comprehensive, standards-based solution combining real-time visual communication, live and on-demand video streaming, digital signage and network-efficient video content distribution, designed to help organisations tackle the inherent communication and collaboration challenges of managing a distributed and mobile workforce and operating globally.

Enabling this solution is a new, scalable video content platform that allows organisations to cost-effectively create and efficiently distribute live and on-demand video content and digital signage. This new solution complements Polycom's market-leading telepresence, video conferencing and desktop video collaboration solutions to give customers unprecedented capabilities for video-enabling their organisations. It also allows customers to enhance unified communication (UC) networks from Polycom Open Collaboration Network partners to support critical enterprise collaboration needs, such as corporate communication, training, distance learning, project communications, customer events, and sales and marketing communications.

For example, Polycom currently helps customers enhance the collaboration capabilities of their Microsoft UC environment by making productivity-enhancing telepresence, video conferencing and desktop video collaboration easily accessible within commonly used applications like Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Outlook. The new video content platform allows customers to further extend the reach of their video assets with video streaming, on-demand video content and digital signage. The new Polycom solution also integrates with Microsoft SharePoint, enabling users to cost-effectively create and import video content and leverage within their familiar workgroup application.

"One of the greatest challenges that organisations face today is ensuring effective communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed teams, customers, partners and vendors," said Andy Miller, executive vice president of Polycom. "Success or failure often comes down to the ability to execute with speed and precision across distances. Polycom is helping customers address these fundamental challenges by enabling them to fully leverage the power of video communication and collaboration across all aspects of their business and from within their core unified communications environment."

"Traditionally, video conferencing and video streaming have been treated as separate business tools and islands of communication within the typical enterprise," explains Ira Weinstein, analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. "By combining these technologies within a single system and user interface, Polycom allows customers to leverage their real-time visual communication environment and on-demand video content to improve efficiency and make more informed business decisions."

The new video content platform is a network solution that includes:

• High definition recording and streaming – The Polycom RSS™ 4000 is a network recording and streaming server platform that allows customers to record and stream video conferences and to capture and stream video content from Polycom and other standards-based telepresence and video conferencing systems in up to full HD resolution.
• Complete video content lifecycle management – The significantly enhanced Polycom Video Media Center™ content management platform enables centralised management of the complete video content lifecycle for capturing, securing, managing, publishing and storing multimedia content, including support for Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 (MOSS 2007) websites.
• Broadcast quality video production – The new Polycom Recording Studio™ is a comprehensive video production studio that allows customers to bring video production capabilities in house for creating broadcast-quality live and on-demand video content.
• Network efficient video content distribution – The Polycom Video Edge™ is a new video content distribution platform supporting broad distribution of live and on-demand video content across the network, minimising bandwidth consumption and improving reliability of streaming video.
• Integrated digital signage solution – Polycom Digital Signage™ is a new, digital signage solution that allows distribution of broadcast-quality multimedia content to targeted groups with minimal network impact, using standard easy to use tools to quickly manage content.

The Polycom solution also supports complementary products and systems from Polycom ARENA ecosystem partners and other vendors, including video encoders, content providers, content delivery systems and networks, wide area network (WAN) optimisation systems, and other standards-based telepresence and video conferencing systems.

The flexibility of the new Polycom solution has benefits for organisations across industries, including multi-national enterprises, educational institutions and local, state and federal government agencies.

Availability:
The new and enhanced products for video recording, streaming and digital signage are planned for availability this month through certified Polycom channel partners.

About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
The Polycom Open Collaboration Network is comprised of leading unified communications and network companies that share a vision around providing open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible within the everyday workflow as part of a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.asia for more information.

© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contacts

• Naomi Jackson
  Polycom, Inc.
  Tel: +61 416 541 544
  naomi.jackson@polycom.com