The solution leverages the RealPresence Network, formerly the Halo/HVEN network acquired from HP in 2011.
Unified communications provider
Polycom Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) detailed its strategy to enable service providers
to offer cloud-delivered, video as a service solutions to its customers. The
company also unveiled RealPresence Cloud, a wholesale offering designed to
enable service providers to bring to market VaaS offerings.
RealPresence Cloud solutions
are designed for service providers to equip them with the infrastructure,
endpoints and services they need to offer businesses subscription-based
solutions for video collaboration.
The offering for service
providers is designed to accelerate the penetration and adoption of Polycom
video collaboration solutions among small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and
enterprises that want either a hybrid solution of both premises-based video collaboration
solutions and video on demand, or a pure VaaS solution. The solution leverages
the RealPresence Network, formerly the Halo/HVEN network acquired from HP in
2011.
Powered by the Polycom
RealPresence platform, RealPresence Cloud solutions encompass a managed
multipoint video service that supports a multitude of connectivity options
between standards-based room, mobile, PC and Web-based endpoints, as well as
Microsoft Lync 2010, IBM Sametime and endpoints supporting the nonstandard Telepresence
Interoperatiblity Protocol (TIP). Service providers can leverage RealPresence
Cloud solutions to offer their customers a VaaS solution without having to
fully integrate and support the core infrastructure on-premises.
Several carriers around the
world are currently using the RealPresence Platform as the enabler for VaaS
solutions. For example, China Unicom has created a video cloud, powered by the
RealPresence Platform, which enables the delivery of VaaS to more than 10,000
business and government organizations throughout China. China Unicom's video
cloud interconnects approximately 100,000 endpoints from 10 vendors. Another
example, Airtel, a service provider in India, is also using the RealPresence
Platform to deliver VaaS solutions to SMBs and enterprises throughout India.
Wainhouse Research forecasts
that the five-year compound annual growth rate for the hosted and managed UC
market worldwide will be 30.7 percent, with revenue of approximately $5 billion
in 2015.
Polycom's cloud strategy
builds on the company's goal to make video collaboration ubiquitous and is a
key tenet of Polycom's recently announced software strategy.
"As the demand for video
collaboration continues to grow, cloud-delivered video offerings will be a key
contributor to this growth. Many SMBs and enterprises will find video as a service
offerings attractive due to their flexibility, scalability and cost savings,"
said Rich Costello, IDC senior research analyst. "Polycom's cloud strategy is
compelling, as it provides an accelerated path to market for cloud-delivered
video, and gives service providers the robust infrastructure, scalability and
interoperability needed to deploy wide-scale video clouds and deliver
compelling VaaS solutions to customers."
The RealPresence platform
provides an open standards-based foundation for integrating UC applications and
infrastructure in enterprise environments-from video endpoints to mobile
devices to UC infrastructure from Microsoft, IBM, BroadSoft, Juniper, and
Siemens. In the interest of driving video ubiquity, the RealPresence Platform
also interoperates with some proprietary systems, such as Cisco Telepresence products
that use the TIP. In addition, the RealPresence platform, which powers the
company's cloud solutions, supports up to 75,000 device registrations and
25,000 concurrent sessions.
In June 2011, Polycom
partnered with leading global telecommunications solution and service providers
from around the world to unleash broader visual communications adoption by
enabling interoperability and global business-to-business connectivity for
telepresence and video conferencing. Polycom is a founding member of the Open
Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), which was incorporated in August.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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