Polycom-Microsoft Move Strengthens Communication Support
Polycom-Microsoft Move Strengthens Communication Support by UCStrategies Staff
The well-known Microsoft Gold partner, Sentri, is set to be acquired by Polycom. It is expected that this move will broaden the possibilities of what can be offered for partner-centric services, particularly to those Polycom-Microsoft Lync distributions.
The specific fiscal details of the transaction have not been made available, however, Polycom commented that the deal, set to close by the end of Q1 2013, will be under $10 million.
According to Polycom, the move towards software-centric solutions and the company’s strong relationship with Microsoft made the Lync expertise of Sentri look particularly appealing.
The Polycom president of products and services, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, stated that over 40 video and voice products by Polycom work cooperatively with Lync, and it is likely now that Polycom will provide consulting, design, deployment and maintenance services to Sentri so that its channel partners can be aided.
Ramakrishna said: “Delivering a robust services portfolio provides Polycom and our partners with the opportunity to not only grow revenues, but also to increase the strategic value we bring to customers by serving as trusted advisers to help them solve their communications objective as their businesses grow.”
Sentri received Microsoft’s East Region Partner of the Year award last year, and is also certified under Microsoft Premier Support for Lync Partners. A Services Center of Excellence will be established by Polycom so that training and certification on Sentri’s services will be made available to its channel community; this is set to begin later in 2013.
Sentri’s services will not be used in competition with other partner services, said a Polycom spokesperson.
Once the acquisition is complete, the Sentri management team and the CEO, Alex Beletsky, will move to Polycom, and other senior members of Polycom will also transition. The Polycom headquarters in Westborough, Massachusetts will remain in the same place.
In April of last year, Sentri purchased a Microsoft cloud partner, Clearway Corporation. This acquisition aided in broadening the practices of Lync, Exchange, System Center and SharePoint, and the ways in which Microsoft cloud services delivers those platforms. Some examples of Microsoft cloud services are Office 365, Intune and Azure. The SharePoint practice of Knowledge Management Associates was acquired last month.
This is an important time for Polycom; through the duration of last year the company posted unsteady earnings, but was successful in releasing a number of cloud services in the fall. This came as part of the expansion of a larger portfolio. The executive team also had some crucial additions recently, and this includes new Americas and APAC chiefs.
The software and services will come to shape the ways that Polycom’s partners (totalling around 7,000) will benefit moving forward, according the CEO, Andy Miller.
Miller stated: “We brought solutions that allowed our partners to not only extend their product portfolios but have a clear differentiation vs. Cisco, LifeSize and others. We announced a lot at once, but we're now working hard with the channel on education and training. How do you sell next-generation, virtualized solutions? There's a lot there to absorb. But they're going to make good money and higher margins with what we're doing here.”
The worldwide market for video collaboration advanced services stands at around $1.6 billion (for this year), according to Gartner, and is set to increase to $1.94 billion by 2016. (CY) Link