Conferencing vendor Polycom has made a number of strategic moves to gain a foothold as unified communications moves further into the mobility, SMB and consumer markets.
The company has forged an agreement with Samsung whereby Polycom will develop standards-based video applications to be embedded and distributed on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which runs the Android OS, as well as other Samsung smartphones.
The company also announced it has extended its relationship with Broadsoft to add Polycom technology to the cloud services provider’s BroadCloud Video unified communications offering, and is developing standards-based H.264 Scalable Video Coding technology for current and future solutions and UC initiatives to ensure interoperability with other vendors’ offerings.
“Every customer and partner has its own specific set of issues why they can’t deploy unified communications or get more out of the systems they have, but the real problems are around simplicity, ease of installation, cost and ubiquitous connectivity," said Joe Burton, senior vice president, chief strategy and technology officer and general manager of enterprise and service provider at Polycom. “We have been driving our strategy to figure out how to blow open the unified communications industry so it is massively easier to adopt, deploy and be integrated into business processes in such a way that drives human latency out of the process."
As such, Polycom is making an end-run around business-to-business communication to enable consumer adoption of telepresence, working hard on ways to create demand outside the corporate network.
By incorporating Polycom technology into the Galaxy and other devices, users are able to connect with any standards-based telepresence and videoconferencing systems and applications. The technology will work on both 3G and 4G networks, for low-latency, high-resolution video, and will combine a directory and chat capability so users can easily find each other and connect.
“We’ve leveraged Polycom’s expertise in providing a compelling unified communications experience in the enterprise setting and are now creating a voice and telepresence experience designed for consumers on several platforms," Burton said. “The Polycom-Samsung agreement is the first tangible piece."
