Digital Signage Daily

Polycom Delivers First Standards-Based Solution Combining Visual Communication, Video Streaming and Video Collaboration to Help Organizations Operate More Effectively Across Distances

PLEASANTON, CA, Mar 16, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Polycom, Inc. (PLCM 33.44, +3.00, +9.86%), 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 organizations 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 organizations 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 organizations. 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 organizations 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(TM) 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(TM) content management platform
    enables centralized 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(TM) 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(TM) is a new video content distribution platform supporting
    broad distribution of live and on-demand video content across the
    network, minimizing bandwidth consumption and improving reliability of
    streaming video.
--  Integrated digital signage solution - Polycom Digital Signage(TM) 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) optimization systems, and other standards-based telepresence and video conferencing systems.

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

“Polycom’s combined video communication and video content solution brings tremendous new capabilities and benefits to support the broader collaboration requirements of the government enterprise,” said Rene LaVigne, President and Chief Executive Officer of Iron Bow Technologies, a leading technology solutions provider and value-added reseller. “Working with Polycom we are showing customers how deploying a unified architecture for communications and collaboration can further increase efficiencies across mission related applications that were historically in silos. The new Polycom solution supports this architecture, as well as many critical applications including advanced training, distance learning, organization-wide communication, knowledge sharing and emergency response.”

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

Supporting Links:

--  Polycom Video Content Solution
--  Polycom Telepresence and Video Conferencing Solutions
--  Follow Polycom on Twitter and Subscribe to Polycom News RSS

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. (PLCM 33.44, +3.00, +9.86%) 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.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.

Copyright 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM(R), 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.

Contact:
Kevin Young
Polycom, Inc.
+1.925.924.5706
Email Contact

SOURCE: Polycom, Inc.