Cisco users longing to integrate Polycom
products into their unified communications infrastructures need wait no longer.
Polycom’s UC Intelligent Core solution now
enables interoperability with other vendors’ solutions, including the closed
Cisco telepresence system based on the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol
(TIP), the company announced.
The UC Intelligent Core platform lets users
deploy multi-vendor UC solutions and protect investment in third-party systems
by allowing integration with new products from other vendors across consumer,
mobile, SMB and enterprise devices, platforms and networks. The system also
allows service providers to deploy cloud-based UC telepresence services for
suppliers, partners and customers.
“Cisco customers have told us for years that they’ve been imprisoned by a
closed telepresence platform that builds a wall around their UC environment and
keeps out non-Cisco users. Today, all that changes,” Andrew Miller, CEO of
Polycom, said in a statement.
“With its
unparalleled support of open standards, the Polycom UC Intelligent Core
solution liberates these customers and gives them more options for
collaborating and expanding their UC environments than ever before, without
having to sacrifice their existing systems. Breakthroughs like this are
fundamental to our vision of UCEverywhere.”
Polycom said
its solution will allow customers to save money. A midsize enterprise will spend
up to $2.1 million less in the first year on a “typical Polycom telepresence
deployment” compared to a “comparable Cisco telepresence deployment,” including
equipment, bandwidth, services and maintenance, the company said.
Motorola
Mobility has deployed Polycom systems, and corporate vice president and CIO Walter F.
Oswald said the interoperability with TIP has been valuable to the company.
“Telepresence
provides tremendous value to our business in terms of improved collaboration
and productivity, but that value would be much greater if we were able to
easily connect our Polycom telepresence systems to B2B partners with Cisco
telepresence systems,” he said in a statement.
“We are
elated that Polycom will release new software to enable that connection, to
protect our multi-million dollar investment, to reduce our ongoing operating
expenses, and to provide us the opportunity to continue to deploy Polycom
telepresence systems.”
Polycom
announced that it plans to begin support for interoperability with TIP
beginning in the second quarter of 2011.