Polycom Inc : Polycom Takes Giant Step Forward to Drive UC and Video Adoption Across Industries with Rich New Suite of Open APIs and Enhanced Scalability, Manageability, and Security for RealPresence® Platform
07/16/2012| 08:35am US/Eastern

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New APIs along with enhanced scalability, manageability, and security
upgrades to its UC software platform extend Polycom's leadership in
making video collaboration ubiquitous across major industry segments
Polycom,
Inc. (Nasdaq:PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based
unified communications (UC), today took a major step forward in its
vision to help drive the adoption, delivery, and management of UC and
video collaboration for enterprises, governments, and organizations
focused on healthcare, education, and manufacturing, with a rich new
suite of open APIs that facilitate the development of custom
applications and extend the value of the Polycom®
RealPresence® Platform - the most comprehensive and interoperable UC
software infrastructure for universal video collaboration. In addition,
Polycom also announced new enhancements to its UC software platform
including the new Polycom® RealPresence® Resource Manager and support
for Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers that improve the
scalability, manageability, and secure delivery of video collaboration
across organizations.
With today's announcement, Polycom is providing independent software
vendors (ISVs), channel partners, customers, and service providers with
open APIs and software development kits (SDKs) to test, create, and
ultimately deliver new software applications and solutions that
integrate with the RealPresence Platform and provide added value to a
video collaboration environment. Aimed at making video collaboration
easier to integrate into everyday business processes, the suite of APIs
allows developers within enterprises and organizations to tailor
applications to seamlessly integrate with Polycom RealPresence video
solutions such as provisioning, scheduling, conference management,
billing, and resource reporting.
"At McAfee, we are extremely serious about our promise to keep our
customers safe," said David Piekarski, senior manager, global
telecommunications operations at McAfee. "We achieve this through
proactive solutions that secure the digital world for our millions of
customers. Through Polycom video collaboration solutions, we are able to
engage multiple, globally distributed engineers to support our most
critical cases. With the advent of the new software updates to the
platform, especially the open APIs, we envision being able to far more
easily and cleanly integrate the software we use to support our
customers."
APIs Extend the Value of Polycom Video Collaboration Solutions
Specific examples of applications leveraging Polycom APIs and extending
the value of the Polycom platform include:
-
myVRM, an ISV that specializes in Web-based multi-level scheduling
solutions, developed a new application using Polycom APIs that makes
it easier for customers to schedule videoconferencing meetings. The
application allows meetings to be scheduled from one centralized
calendar using a personal information manager interface, a Web
interface, or through iOS or Android integration. "With the new
Polycom open APIs, we were able to easily develop a video scheduling
application that further extends the usage and benefits of video
collaboration across any industry," Larry Roher, CEO of myVRM. "Our
application enables businesses to be more efficient when it comes to
scheduling videoconferencing meetings, which helps to drive adoption
and a higher ROI."
-
A leading Polycom education customer is currently developing
applications to integrate video network monitoring into their
monitoring system to view everything on one console, as well as a
"bill back" application for the 10 colleges that use video
collaboration services to create a pay-as-you-use video collaboration
model.
-
ISV partner ProtonMedia, a leading 3D virtual collaboration provider
for the enterprise, is integrating Polycom video into its ProtoSphere
platform, which allows users to participate in virtual collaboration
rooms using an avatar and live video streams. "ProtonMedia decided to
partner with Polycom because they offered the best-of-breed video
collaboration solution and the most open developer ecosystem in which
we could engage," said Ron Burns, CEO, ProtonMedia.
-
With API support, companies can create applications that securely
deliver advanced conference control features for users, such as
conference start and stop, mute, and record.
-
Polycom customers have expressed interest in creating a custom virtual
meeting room application for Video-as-a-Service offerings, as well as
directory applications that connect multiple directory platforms.
-
Vertical market segments - including healthcare, education,
government, manufacturing, and finance - can benefit from new custom
applications that integrate directly with Polycom's UC platform. For
example, in a hospital environment, a custom application could alert
network administrators when a trauma video call is initiated, ensuring
that on-demand, white-glove service support is available at the time
needed most.
"Polycom has a dedicated focus on scaling video collaboration through a
commitment to open standards, interoperability, new APIs, and a focus on
a simple experience for end users and IT administrators," said Zeus
Kerravala, CEO of ZKResearch. "This latest release enables both
enterprises and service providers to deliver secure, high-quality video
collaboration within the office as well as to on-the-go mobile users.
The increase in use of video endpoints will further the value of video
investments that are already in place and add to the 'network effect,'
helping to make video a mainstream collaboration tool."
ISVs and enterprise customers can obtain the new APIs and SDKs at developer.polycom.com,
where they can also create and/or test custom solutions in a "digital
sandbox" and participate in various industry discussion forums with
other developers. Polycom is also introducing new professional
services to support this program, including consulting support for
existing customer IT resources, API software development, and full
custom API software development for a specific project.
"As more organizations realize the benefits of collaborating
face-to-face by video from anywhere - benefits such as increased
productivity, improved engagement, and reduced operational and travel
costs - they want to fully incorporate video into their business
processes and workflows to make usage as easy as possible," said
Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President of Products and Services, Polycom. "Our
new suite of APIs for the RealPresence Platform will provide this
integration and give customers greater flexibility to innovate as they
further build out their video collaboration networks to drive
significant business value. At the same time, we're delivering more
scalability and manageability to IT administrators who are looking to
video-enable their organizations."
Increased Manageability and Scalability of Video Collaboration
Networks
Another enhancement to the RealPresence Platform announced today is the
new Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager, a new scheduling, management,
and provisioning solution that significantly increases the scalability
of the platform by 100 percent to allow a single RealPresence Resource
Manager to support up to 10,000 devices including room and immersive
systems, tablets, smartphones, laptops, and executive video desktops.
The RealPresence Resource Manager also makes it easier for IT
administrators to manage their organization's video collaboration
network, including provisioning new devices to the network and
monitoring video collaboration usage across the organization to ensure a
reliable high-quality experience for the end user. In addition,
RealPresence Resource Manager makes it easier to schedule and manage
video collaboration calls.
Extending Secure Video Collaboration Beyond the Office
A growing number of employees are mobile and connecting to video
collaboration networks via tablets, smartphones or laptops - yet they
require the same levels of secure connectivity as employees working in
the office. To meet this need, Polycom has achieved full
interoperability with Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers,
which enables organizations to extend video collaboration to mobile
devices and provides secure connectivity across network boundaries,
without users worrying about the complexities of firewall traversal or
networking configurations. To learn more about how Polycom can help
businesses scale to support thousands of mobile workers, see the related
Polycom RealPresence Mobile 1.3 press
release.
About Polycom RealPresence Platform
The Polycom®
RealPresence® Platform - the most comprehensive and
interoperable UC infrastructure for universal video collaboration -
provides robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability,
flexibility, and security. The unique open-standards approach of the
Polycom RealPresence Platform ensures integration with hundreds of
unified communications and social networking applications, and
integrates with core networking and security infrastructure to deliver
secure collaboration with any number of people across heterogeneous
networks with up to 50
percent less bandwidth consumption than other solutions. Because of
Polycom's focus on interoperability, the RealPresence Platform
transforms islands of employees and fragmented communications systems
into a seamless video enterprise, which makes enterprise-grade video
easily and securely accessible to all authorized personnel whether
they're mobile, remote, or on-site. The RealPresence Platform also
provides the security, reliability, management, and massive scalability
to support video as a cloud-based service, delivered by service
providers to enterprises, SMBs, and consumers.
To learn more about how the enhancements to the RealPresence Platform
can benefit service providers, see the related press
release.
Availability
The documentation for the open APIs on developer.polycom.com will
be available in late July 2012 and the Polycom Resource Manager with
multi-tenancy support will be available August 2012. The
interoperability with Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers is
available today.
Additional Supporting Customer Quote:
"At GCS e-santé Picardie, our commitment is to modernize the technology
system in the health and medical sector. It includes a progressive and
ambitious telemedicine initiative that is underway with Polycom, as part
of the Comedi-e telemedicine platform. Through Polycom video
collaboration solutions, we're actively connecting physicians with
patients by video for teleconsultations and teleconferences in various
medical specialties under the management of Christine Boutet-Rixe,
medical director of the GCS. We're expecting that the announced software
updates of the platform, especially the open APIs, will provide more
flexibility and options that we believe will help extend the value of
the Polycom RealPresence Platform so that we can provide even more
innovative telemedicine solutions to patients throughout Picardie, in
North of France," said Christian Huart, Director of GCS e-santé. This
Telemedicine Platform is integrated by OSPITEL (group SPIE
Communications, INOVELAN, MiPiH) and promoted by the GCS e-santé
Picardie.
About Polycom
Polycom is the global leader in open standards-based unified
communications (UC) solutions for telepresence,
video,
and voice
powered by the Polycom® RealPresence®
Platform. The RealPresence Platform interoperates with the broadest
range of business, mobile, and social applications and devices. More
than 400,000 organizations trust Polycom solutions to collaborate and
meet face to face from any location for more productive and effective
engagement with colleagues, partners, customers, specialists, and
prospects. Polycom, together with its broad partner ecosystem, provides
customers with the best total cost of ownership, interoperability,
scalability, and security for video collaboration, whether on-premises,
hosted, or cloud delivered. Visit www.polycom.com
or connect with Polycom on Twitter,
Facebook,
and LinkedIn.
This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of
the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995 regarding future events, including statements regarding
Polycom taking a step forward in its vision to help drive adoption,
delivery and management of UC and video collaboration in certain
industries. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and
uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially,
including the impact of competition on our product sales and for our
customers and partners; the impact of increased competition due to
consolidation in our industry or competition from companies that are
larger or that have greater resources than we do; potential fluctuations
in results and future growth rates; risks associated with general
economic conditions and external market factors; the market acceptance
of our products and changing market demands, including demands for
differing technologies or product and services offerings; our ability to
successfully integrate our acquisitions into our business; possible
delays in the development, availability and shipment of new products;
increasing costs and differing uses of capital; changes in key personnel
that may cause disruption to the business; any disruptive impact to us
that may result from new executive hires; continuing disruption to the
business due to the realignment of the North America sales organization;
our inability to achieve the expected results from adjustments being
made to our expense profile; the impact of restructuring actions; and
the impact of global conflicts that may adversely impact our business.
Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's
Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2012, and
in other reports filed by Polycom with the SEC. Polycom disclaims any
intent or obligations to update these forward-looking statements.
NOTE: The product plans, specifications, and descriptions herein are
provided for information only and subject to change without notice, and
are provided without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Polycom
reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time. Products
and related specifications referenced herein are not guaranteed and will
be delivered on a when and if available basis.
© 2012 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom 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.
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Polycom, Inc.
Brianna Woon, +1-408-586-4072
brianna.woon@polycom.com
© Business Wire 2012
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