Polycom Refreshes Video-Conferencing Portfolio, Adds iPad Integration

Polycom (News - Alert) has launched a new portfolio with mobile, desktop and room-based offerings, featuring a completely redesigned user interface, HD image quality, video and content-sharing and audio features, and lower IT management and support requirements. And, it offers Apple (News - Alert) iPad integration.

The portfolio includes the Polycom RealPresence Group Series (300, 500 and 700) for room-based conferencing; the RealPresence VisualEdge ultra-slim executive desktop video endpoint; updated Polycom RealPresence Desktop 2.0 software for PCs and laptops (Windows and Mac OS X); and Polycom RealPresence Mobile 2.0 for tablets and smartphones (iOS and Android (News - Alert) devices).

In all, the new portfolio adds more than 20 features, the company noted. Those include the new Polycom SmartPairing technology, which wirelessly connects Apple iPad to video meetings so that users can control the meeting and even transfer a live video call from tablet to big screen with a swipe. The technology goes beyond standard mobile clients for smartphones and tablets by leveraging iPad’s native capabilities.

The new portfolio also supports the industry’s first implementation of open standards-based Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology, which delivers 3X HD multipoint capacity for greater scalability and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Video-conferencing is moving from niche to mainstream as the connection cost and range of endpoints continues to proliferate. Gartner (News - Alert) Inc. finds that organizations across industries are video-enabling their workforce, including supplying personal video-conferencing systems to employees. Gartner estimates that there will be more than 200 million employees using enterprise-supplied personal video-conferencing systems worldwide by 2016, up from just 33 million in 2012.

Polycom’s new portfolio echoes the theme. “Years of R&D have gone into developing these solutions, which are designed to deliver the best user experience with the highest video and audio performance in the industry, regardless of whether users are in the office, at home or remote with a mobile device,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president of products and services at Polycom. “A key to the new Polycom experience is a new UI that greatly simplifies the navigation for conducting and controlling video meetings and reduces IT management and training costs. From the underlying software to new hardware design and ‘cool’ form factors, we have extended our world-class portfolio of Polycom video collaboration endpoints as we move to further drive the mass adoption of video while satisfying a variety of use cases — from traveling sales reps and teleworkers, to executives and dispersed engineering orgs, to remote professors and physicians.”