Polycom Seeks Competitive Advantage Over Rivals in Video Collaboration

At a NASDAQ- hosted meeting, Polycom unveiled a wide-ranging portfolio of new software, platform enhancements and hardware geared at accelerating mass adoption of video collaboration via Polycom solutions by enabling: secure and resilient connection to Polycom's infrastructure from outside the corporate firewall, easier participation in video meetings once connected, and lower cost deployment of video communication as a routine line-of-business application.

CloudAXIS Suite

Center stage in the announcement was the introduction of Polycom’s RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite – a Video Collaboration as a Service (VCaaS) solution. This is a tagged as the breakthrough in the move to connect the consumer world into the business world. There are four key attributes to this technology:

1. It’s an extension to the investments customers have already made in Polycom’s RealPresence Platform for both private and public cloud deployments

2. It extends enterprise-grade video collaboration to any business (B2B) or consumer (B2C)

3. It lets customers, whether you’re on Skype, Facebook, Google talk, or other presence-based apps to come into a secure videoconference powered by Polycom via a browser. This application supports a simple click-on-an-invite URL to fire-up the video collaboration session. (Sounds very much like PanTerra’s ConnectMe HD video conferencing based on HTML5 and WebRTC.)

4. Finally, it enables service providers and solution providers to deliver multipoint VCaaS and create new revenue streams. Some examples given were:

• Attract Over The Top (OTT) customers to service provider VCaaS offerings, and
  
  
• Integration into OSS/BSS

CloudAXIS Suite, which runs on industry-standard servers, will be available in enterprise and partner/service provider editions, for deployment in private and public clouds. This product will be delivered by Polycom carrier community and partner community. Polycom is not going direct. They will not compete against their partners.

RealPresence Platform Enhancements

Polycom's portfolio of midmarket solutions includes a new RealPresence Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition.

With the new 800s Polycom has expanded and extended its protocol support by delivering Scalable Video Codec (SVC) across the platform. In addition, they have extended the HD capacity of the platform by three times. Now existing customers who want to expand capacity by providing some SVC along with some AVC (Advanced Video Coding) have the ability to go up to three times the current capacity of the investment they have made. Today, Polycom is the only vendor that can currently deliver multiple protocols on the same platform without requiring special gateways.

This is a key competitive move for Polycom where they don’t have first mover advantage. LifeSize introduced its UVC Multipoint back in August. This is the industry’s first virtualized, standards-based Multipoint Control Unit (MCU). It was engineered for on-demand multiparty video calling and is optimized for video resolution of mobile devices. It is available as virtual machine software or UVC hardware appliance. However, it does not support SVC.

On the SVC front we have Vidyo who has developed a virtualized architecture that allows the company to provide enterprise-grade, mobility-focused video conferencing solutions through utilization of Vidyo’s H.264 SVC routing architecture. Vidyo charges licensing fees for endpoints. This pricing scheme is enabled by the company's software-based offering that does not require a dedicated network or MCU. One concern here is that H.264 SVC is not an industry standard. As a result, a Vidyo gateway must be employed when communicating between a Vidyo solution and a platform from another vendor or with endpoints configured for today’s standards. This largely reduces the price performance increases the Vidyo SVC architecture allows.

New Endpoints and Enhanced User Experience

Polycom has announced three new endpoint models (300, 500 and 700), with inputs and outputs catering to different sizes of audience. For the C-level clientele, there's the VisualEdge Executive Desktop, a slim (under 2.5cm) endpoint with a 27-inch screen that can also function as a regular PC display.

Polycom user experience (UX) enhancements are designed to drive a superior experience and ease-of-use for users to increase adoption, while minimizing IT management and support, keeping IT costs down and usage up for better TCO. We have the new RealPresence Group 300 that supports resolution up to 1080p60 and is ideal for smaller collaboration spaces such as huddle rooms. Polycom RealPresence Desktop 2.0 software for PCs and laptops (Windows and Mac OS X) and the next generation of Polycom RealPresence Mobile 2.0 for smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android devices) extend video collaboration beyond conference rooms. SmartPairing, for example, allows an iPad running RealPresence Mobile 2.0 to link wirelessly to a Polycom room-level endpoint; this will allow you to transfer a video call from tablet to big screen with the swipe of a finger, and use the tablet as a remote control.

Accelerate Mass Adoption of Video Collaboration

To simplify the implementation of video collaboration systems and drive usage, Polycom offers a full range of services and financing options.

• By leveraging the expertise of Polycom Global Services to design, deploy, maintain, manage, and optimize their video collaboration solutions, customers can accelerate and maximize their return on investment. Polycom recently launched a portfolio of Polycom Adoption Services intended to help drive user adoption.
  
  
• Polycom Capital provides flexible financing for reseller partners and end users, helping customers increase their buying power and maintain their competitive advantage. With various payment options and the ability to include maintenance, installation and services, Polycom Capital provides a total solution tailored for customers’ specific business requirements. Financing options include fully customized financial solutions, technology refresh programs, payment deferral programs, capital finance leases, operating fair market value leases, and maintenance financing.