Polycom's RealPresence Platform Secures Video Collaboration for NATO Personnel

By Calvin Azuri TMCnet Contributor

Polycom (News - Alert) recently announced that the Polycom RealPresence Platform will be used by NATO personnel for enabling a secure environment for video collaborations. Polycom, a leader in open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), became the video collaboration platform of choice for NATO via a contract which was given to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC (News - Alert)).

NATO personnel carry out a number of confidential diplomatic missions, plan out humanitarian interventions, and keep the NATO Response Force ready to go and battle ready at all times. In doing so, NATO has been focusing on enhancing its decision making and communication avenues and structure to optimize on time and other resources via video meetings. SAIC is deploying the Polycom RealPresence Platform at all vital NATO locations across Europe and North America.

In a statement, Gus Mommers, Center Head, Conference Management Services at the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency said that, "Accurate and clear communication is essential when representatives from 28 different countries and cultures are weighing issues central to their collective defense, yet those communications must be trusted and reliable to mitigate the security risks posed by new ways of working. At NIAS 2013, NATO's IT community will learn how to modernize our IT infrastructure in ways that preserve information assurance. The solutions demonstrated here by SAIC and Polycom - many of which are already in use throughout NATO - are an important part of that information assurance landscape."

The Polycom RealPresence Video Collaboration Server has been developed to support "NATO Secret" classification for communication which is confidential and also for "NATO Unclassified" which includes less secretive tasks such as resource planning and managing daily affairs. Polycom's firewall traversal solutions will allow network administrators to make it easy for desktop or mobile video users to take part in meetings without jeopardizing NATO's network. A scheduling application which has been designed with myVRM, a Polycom/ SAIC Technology Partner, can be used by authorized personnel to plan video meeting schedules. Also because Polycom is compatible with Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync, users of Microsoft Lync will be able to easily start or join a video meeting. Polycom has also included other capabilities such as –generation of closed captioning which makes it easy for NATO members to communicate, even if they are hearing-impaired.

Polycom and SAIC will showcase the secure video collaboration capabilities of the solution at the NATO Information Assurance and Cyber Defense Symposium (NIAS 2013) to be held from Sept. 17 to 19 in Mons, Belgium - An immersive Polycom Open Telepresence (News - Alert) Experience (OTX) environment located in the Polycom/SAIC Booth #L16 will be used by Polycom experts to remotely initiate a live video collaboration both from the United States and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Polycom Co-founder Jeffrey Rodman (News - Alert) will also hold a workshop to display how Polycom unified video collaboration solutions can be used to meet information assurance needs of mission-critical applications.

Edited by Ryan Sartor