Sometimes it's hard to justify a new purchase, not just because of cash, but because of the implications if it should break down. These major purchases help keep a business running, and reliability becomes paramount. That's good news for IP Phone (News - Alert) Warehouse buyers, as the company recently announced it would bring the Polycom Limited Lifetime Hardware Replacement Service in for certain Polycom (News - Alert) purchases.

The Polycom service offers protection thanks to rapid replacements of those certain devices in the event defective ones arise. It's not just about quick replacement, however, as those customers in the Polycom program can also get access to Polycom tech support online or even by phone. Devices qualifying for Polycom's protection include several models in the SoundStation line, including the SoundStation 2 and SoundStation 2W, as well as the IP 5000, IP 6000 and IP 7000. The Polycom CX 500 and CX 600 desktop phones are in, and so too is the CX 3000 conference phone. Rounding out the covered devices are the VVX 300, 400, 500 and 600 desktop phones, as well as the most recent addition, the RealPresence Trio 8800.

Each offers its own particular benefits for users, but the newly-added Trio 8800 offers an impressive set of its own. Particularly useful for bring your own device (BYOD) office settings, users can quickly pair other devices to the Trio 8800, whether wired or wireless. Plus, with the addition of the RealPresence Visual+ tool, the Trio 8800 becomes a ready participant in video conferencing and even content sharing, giving it that much extra power for a mobile workforce that's often turning to mobile devices.

This is a fine example of a vendor, and a company, standing behind its products. It can be tough to get businesses to switch brands, because such changes mean unknown potential issues. If something should go wrong with these new brands, it could represent hours of downtime and huge losses in both opportunity cost and in actual revenue. By offering up this kind of protection, though, Polycom improves the chances that companies unfamiliar with the Polycom brand will make the move to it. After all, what's the risk in doing business with a company that will so quickly step in to make things right should something go wrong? Yes, there's a brief outage while things are back up to snuff, but brief outages can happen every day for things well out of a business' control. Being prepared to absorb an outage measured in hours or a couple days is just part of the territory.

Polycom's protection packages reduce the chances of long-term outage thanks to hardware failure to roughly the same level as power outages, often repaired quickly and back up and running soon. It's a great move for IP Phone Warehouse to bring in Polycom protection, and an even better move for Polycom to have it to begin with.