Polycom Addresses Growing Demand for Telepresence with Enhanced Solutions and Expanded Service Offerings for Channel Partners

Polycom expands service options for partners, giving customers greater flexibility for supporting immersive telepresence through in-house resources or outsourced services.

PLEASANTON, Calif. - To address growing interest in telepresence and the varied IT resource capabilities and requirements of customers, Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice communications solutions, today announced new capabilities for its immersive telepresence solutions and expanded services delivered through Polycom certified service partners that give customers greater flexibility to support deployments with in-house resources or through partial or complete outsourced services.

“Interest in telepresence continues to grow as companies across industries look to transform their organizations with better, faster, and smarter collaboration across distances,” said Geno Alissi, senior vice president and general manager of Polycom Service Division. “Telepresence deployments are reaching small and large organizations alike, each of which has unique infrastructure and IT resource capabilities and requirements. By providing greater flexibility and choice through our expanded service options and new self-service capabilities in our systems, Polycom and its certified telepresence partners can address the specific needs of a broader range of customers.”

For customers wanting to outsource all or part of the management of their immersive telepresence solutions, Polycom service partners can now offer a new Assisted Operations Service (AOS) in addition to existing fully managed Video Network Operations Center (VNOC) service that manages all aspects of a customer’s immersive telepresence deployment. With AOS, the customer’s in-house IT or video operations team manages immersive telepresence scheduling, conference management, and reporting. An external certified Polycom service provider partner provides 24x7 remote system monitoring and streamlined fault management to maximize solution availability.

To complement the AOS service and also address customers with experienced in-house IT resources that want to manage all aspects of their immersive telepresence deployments, Polycom introduced a new capability for its industry-leading Polycom RealPresence™ Experience (RPX™) and Polycom Telepresence Experience™ (TPX™) immersive telepresence solutions called Single Touch Multipoint, which allows users to easily initiate calls among multiple locations. With this new capability, users simply touch a single button on the RPX and TPX touch-screen executive control panel to join a meeting and the system connects the call and determines how sites appear based on automatic, optimized layout views or administrator-configured custom layouts. This feature reduces the need for assistance in initiating telepresence calls that include multiple sites and calls with different types of telepresence and video conferencing systems.

“Polycom is giving customers choice and flexibility in terms of how they utilize telepresence throughout their organization,” said Andrew W. Davis, Senior Analyst and Founding Partner, Wainhouse Research. “The reality is that no single approach is going to meet the needs of all customers and Polycom is addressing that issue by allowing its partners to deliver telepresence as a fully managed service, a partially managed service to complement customer in-house IT capabilities, or as a customer-managed solution. Combined with the breadth of its solution portfolio and significant installed base, Polycom is well-positioned in the telepresence market.”

Polycom Global Services delivers a comprehensive range of services through a worldwide network of partners to support telepresence and broader visual communication deployments. Services range from assessment, planning, design, implementation and management of telepresence and visual communication networks, applications and operations, to support, maintenance and training.

“Polycom service partners have unparalleled experience and expertise in delivering best-in-class video networks,” added Alissi. “Our global partners are instrumental in helping best-in-class companies around the world derive maximum value and the best experience from their visual communication investments.”

Polycom offers the broadest portfolio of telepresence solutions that empowers people to work together more effectively and productively across distances. Polycom telepresence solutions can support virtually any application, space and budget requirement with fully interoperable, standards-based solutions from personal telepresence at the desktop; room telepresence for conference rooms; specialized solutions for vertical applications and custom rooms; and immersive telepresence solutions that make people feel like they are in the same room as people in other locations. Polycom is the leading provider of telepresence solutions with approximately 50,000 systems shipped to thousands of customers worldwide, and more than 600 patents related to voice, video and telepresence technologies.

Pricing and Availability
The Polycom AOS service is now available worldwide through Polycom certified telepresence service partners with suggested pricing ranging from US$1,000-$1,250 per month based on the Polycom RPX or TPX system (annual agreement required). The new Single Touch Multipoint software is now available worldwide at no additional cost for Polycom RPX and TPX customers with a current maintenance agreement. The Single Touch Multipoint software requires a PC and an RMX 2000 conference platform (Version 4.0 with Telepresence Option) on the network. Polycom Global Services also offers an implementation service for Single Touch Multipoint, which includes installation, control system customization and project management.

Additional Information:
Polycom Telepresence Solutions
http://www.polycom.com/telepresence

Polycom Global Services
http://www.polycom.com/services/index.html

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Please visit www.polycom.com for more information.