Polycom Announces Industry-Transforming Solutions To Accelerate Mass Adoption of Video Collaboration.

Polycom Press Releases

Oct 8, 2012, SAN JOSE, Calif. & NEW YORK

Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), today announced breakthrough solutions that are designed to transform the industry, accelerate mass adoption of video collaboration, and fuel new growth opportunities for the company in both existing and new markets. Polycom expects the market to grow to nearly $12 billion in 2015, at a 16% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate).

Today’s announcements are the culmination of over two years of R&D efforts focused on augmenting Polycom’s portfolio and removing the impediments to video adoption by making video collaboration easier to use and manage, universally accessible, more scalable at a lower cost, more affordable for small to medium-size enterprises, more interoperable, and more sleek and powerful for business users on their desktop. As part of today’s announcements, Polycom unveiled Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite, a new extension to the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform, which lets customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype®, Facebook®, Google Talk™, and other business video applications via a browser, for B2B and B2C video conferencing with the highest quality, reliability and security.

Polycom executives, including CEO Andy Miller, are hosting a Polycom Strategy Day for analysts today at the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York City, to discuss these breakthrough solutions and share Polycom’s vision and long-term strategy (click here to watch the live webcast at 10 a.m. ET).

“Our passion at Polycom is to make video collaboration simple to use and available to everyone. Today, we are introducing breakthrough solutions that we believe take ease of use and universal access to exciting new levels, while extending and protecting investments customers have made in Polycom’s interoperable, open standards-based platform and solutions,” said Andy Miller, CEO, Polycom. “We believe this launch of next-generation video solutions will set a new industry standard for best user experience for both end users and IT administrators, and will also provide a seamless and extensible path for customers to fully video-enable their organizations. We also believe these new solutions will significantly expand our addressable market opportunity and accelerate growth for Polycom and our partners, within our installed base, and from new market opportunities within small-to-medium enterprises, and through new OEM distribution models.”

“A number of impediments have hampered the mass adoption of video conferencing including too many closed video ‘islands’ and the limited scalability of traditional video solutions,” said Ira M. Weinstein, senior analyst and partner, Wainhouse Research. “With this set of announcements, Polycom is tackling these adoption barriers head-on by making video conferencing easier to deploy, easier to use, and easier to scale without forcing forklift upgrades.  This is the type of innovation and vision that made Polycom an early market leader in video collaboration.  Make no mistake — we are seeing Polycom 2.0.”

In the largest product launch in the Company’s history, Polycom is delivering a portfolio of next-generation products and solutions – fully backward- and forward-compatible – that extend the delivery of video collaboration to more endpoints, more environments and more people. Polycom’s innovative new portfolio of offerings includes:

Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite – Universal Access to Enterprise-Grade Video Collaboration (view full press release)
In a move that is intended to provide universal access to enterprise-grade video collaboration to hundreds of millions of people, Polycom unveiled RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite, which lets Polycom customers extend enterprise-grade video collaboration to users of Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, and other business video applications via a browser.  RealPresence CloudAXIS is a suite of software that runs on the Polycom RealPresence Platform in private enterprise clouds or public cloud deployments (available in both an enterprise and partner/service provider edition), and securely extends enterprise-grade video and content collaboration outside the firewall to any business (B2B) or consumer (B2C) via a browser to enable truly ubiquitous video collaboration at the highest quality, reliability and security. RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite is ideal for Polycom partners and service providers to expand from offering Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) to Video Collaboration-as-a-Service (VCaaS) – adding applications such as recording and streaming, web conferencing, and collaboration tools such as digital whiteboards—thus creating greater customer value and new revenue streams.

Polycom RealPresence Platform Delivers 3X HD Video Capacity via Open Standards-Based SVC, and First Multi-Protocol, Integrated Software MCU for Industry-Standard Servers (view full release)

• Powerful enhancements to the RealPresence Platform include support for the industry’s first implementation of open standards-based Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology. This implementation delivers 3X HD multipoint capacity for greater scalability and dramatically lower TCO, higher quality video performance across devices, and breakthrough interoperability for backwards- and forwards-compatibility—protecting customers’ video investments and eliminating the need for expensive gateways or hardware required by competitive proprietary SVC products. The significant boost in capacity is important as customers bring video to more users, and as trends such as BYOD (bring your own device), mobile computing, and social networking extend enterprise-grade video conferencing to the masses. SVC support is available through software updates to components of the RealPresence Platform, including RealPresence Collaboration Server 7.8 and 8.1 (RMX), Resource Manager 7.1, and Virtualization Manager 5.1 (DMA). These software updates also include support for Polycom’s next-generation video endpoints announced today.Polycom last week announced it is licensing its open standards-based SVC implementation royalty free to the industry, including the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCI Forum), to ensure adoption and industry-wide interoperability. (See related press release.)“Microsoft is enthusiastic to see Polycom’s licensing of open standards-based SVC technology as it provides the foundation to deliver interoperable solutions that our joint customers demand,” said Warren Barkley, General Manager Lync Customer and Partner Engineering, Microsoft.
• Polycom also introduced Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, the industry’s first multi-protocol, integrated software MCU that runs on industry-standard servers. The Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition – which also delivers open standards-based SVC that results in 3X HD multipoint video capacity for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, and superior performance – is ideal for mid-sized enterprises such as professional service firms, private healthcare institutions, and investment firms, as well as for larger organizations with branch offices. Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, represents a significant step forward in delivering virtualized video collaboration from the datacenter, resulting in even greater flexibility and lower cost.

The Polycom® RealPresence® Platform – the most interoperable and comprehensive software infrastructure for universal video collaboration – provides robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability, flexibility, and security for enterprises, as well as service providers delivering VaaS or VCaaS. Polycom launched in July a rich new suite of open APIs for developers, partners, and service providers to integrate business apps such as billing, scheduling, directory, management, and monitoring with the RealPresence Platform, extending the value of RealPresence video solutions to new industries, new use cases, and new users.

Polycom UX™ – The Industry’s Best User Experience >
The new Polycom UX delivers the industry’s best video collaboration experience with more than 20 new user innovations and features, including a completely redesigned UI and the industry’s most lifelike HD image quality (up to 1080p60 resolution), patent-pending Polycom® SmartPairing™ technology, and innovative only-from-Polycom video, content sharing, and audio features. The Polycom UX is 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. Features include:

• Simple and intuitive new UI. The new UI delivers a simple, intuitive and elegant user interface that will be visually and functionally consistent across Polycom’s next-generation video collaboration solutions. Based on years of extensive user testing and human factors research, the UI is designed with features like drop-down menus for ease of use, smart menus that remember the last contact, elegant and intuitive navigation, and a dramatically simplified new remote control, making it easy for anyone to initiate and control video meetings.
• Only from Polycom, the industry’s first SmartPairing software. Patent-pending Polycom SmartPairing technology, built into Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile 2.0, wirelessly connects Apple iPads to the new Group Series, enhanced HDX 3.1 series, and RealPresence® VisualEdge™ products, letting users control video meetings with their tablets and transfer a live video call from their tablet to a big screen with the swipe of a finger.
• Best-in-class video and audio quality. Polycom UX delivers the highest quality resolution (up to 1080p60 resolution) video for the industry’s most lifelike visual quality, and also features Polycom’s legendary HD audio technology, including the new patent-pending Polycom NoiseCancel™ technology, which heightens collaboration by automatically eliminating unwanted or distracting noises like keyboard typing or paper shuffling, and Polycom ConstantClarity™ technology, which enables extraordinary audio and video fidelity that allows users to distinguish every syllable of every word they hear in a Polycom video conference, resulting in an amazing video experience even in challenging environments.

Superior User Experiences on Next-Generation Video Endpoints: New Polycom RealPresence Group Series, New Ultra-Slim RealPresence VisualEdge Executive Desktop, and Updated RealPresence Software for PCs and Mobile Devices (view fullpress release)
Polycom’s next-generation video collaboration endpoints range from new systems for rooms of all sizes, to a sleek and powerful executive desktop system, to enhanced software for PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones—all providing a best-in-class user experience (Polycom UX) via a completely redesigned user interface and the industry’s most lifelike HD image quality (up to 1080p60 resolution), and supporting the first open standards-based SVC protocol when powered by the Polycom RealPresence Platform.

• Polycom® RealPresence® Group Series (300, 500 and 700) – the next-generation HD video collaboration systems for both rooms and budgets of all sizes.
• Polycom RealPresence VisualEdge – delivers ultra-slim (less than 1” thick) and sleek design, along with powerful executive desktop video collaboration experiences with the highest video resolution (up to 1080p60) and largest screen (27”) in its category, and can serve as a PC display.
• Updated Polycom RealPresence Desktop 2.0 software for PCs and laptops (Windows and Mac OS X) and Polycom RealPresence Mobile 2.0 for tablets and smartphones (iOS and Android devices) extends video beyond conference rooms, enabling organizations to deliver video collaboration to more users in more environments.

Polycom’s next-generation portfolio includes solutions available to customers of all sizes, including a specific portfolio designed for mid-market customers, to deliver affordable solutions that are easy to use and manage. The mid-market portfolio includes: RealPresence Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition; high quality RealPresence Group 300 for smaller spaces or huddle rooms; RealPresence Desktop 2.0 and RealPresence Mobile 2.0. (view full mid-market press release)

Multi-Vendor Interoperability for Investment Protection
Polycom’s new offerings provide the broadest multi-vendor integration with support for both open-standards and proprietary protocols, including H.263, H.264 High Profile, RTV (Microsoft), TIP, and now SVC.  Polycom RealPresence solutions connect to millions of existing standards-based UC solutions (whether Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, IBM, Siemens, HP, or mixed) and potentially hundreds of millions of future SVC-based solutions on leading UC platforms such as Microsoft® Lync™.

Availability
Polycom plans to make available the Polycom® RealPresence® CloudAXIS™ Suite to enterprisesin Q1 2013, and also plans to make available trials for service providers in Q1 2013. Polycom® RealPresence® Virtualization Manager 5.1 (DMA), RealPresence® Resource Manager 7.1, RealPresence® Access Director™, RealPresence® Collaboration Server 7.8 (RMX) will be available in November 2012; SVC support will be available via a software update at no charge for customers under a maintenance plan. The RealPresence® Collaboration Server 8.1 (RMX) is planned to be available in 1H 2013 and will provide mixed AVC/SVC call capabilities. Polycom® RealPresence® Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, will be available in December 2012. The Polycom® EagleEye Acoustic camera will be available in November 2012. The Polycom® RealPresence® Group Series 300 and 500 are available to order now. RealPresence Group 700 will be available in December 2012. Polycom plans to make Polycom® RealPresence® VisualEdge™ available in April 2013. Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile 2.0 will be available as a free download from the Apple AppStore™ and Google Play in November 2012. Polycom® RealPresence® Desktop 2.0 for Windows will be available in November 2012 and for Apple® Mac OS X the availability is planned for the first-half 2013. Initially, SmartPairing will run on the iPad® 2 and the new iPad, with capabilities to connect to the enhanced Polycom® HDX® Series v.3.1 and the Polycom® RealPresence® Group Series. Polycom plans to make available SmartPairing to the Polycom® RealPresence® VisualEdge™ in the first-half of 2013. The new UI will be available initially on the Polycom® RealPresence® Group Series, and is planned to be available soon after on RealPresence Desktop 2.0, Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile 2.0, and Polycom® RealPresence® VisualEdge™. Support for up to 1080p60 resolutions will be available on Polycom® RealPresence® Group Series and Polycom® RealPresence® VisualEdge™. Polycom® HDX® Series v.3.1 with embedded Polycom® RealPresence® Whiteboard capabilities will be available in December 2012 (available as a free download for existing customers who are on a maintenance contract). Polycom® NoiseCancel™ technology will initially be available on the Polycom® RealPresence® VisualEdge™. Polycom® ConstantClarity™ technology is available today on leading Polycom video and voice solutions. Products and solutions availability may vary by country.  For more information, visit www.polycom.com, call 1-800-POLYCOM or contact one of our more than 6,500 channel partners worldwide.