You are here: Home » Green ICT » Applications » Polycom adds managed services to telepresence offering

Polycom adds managed services to telepresence offering

Tony Chan | July 31, 2009 | 0 Comments

Polycom has added a partial managed services support option for its immersive telepresence solutions, giving its customers the option to support deployments with in-house resources or through partial or complete outsourced services.

According to the Polycom, the company service partners can now offer a new Assisted Operations Service (AOS) in addition to existing fully managed Video Network Operations Center (VNOC) service that manages all aspects of a customer’s immersive telepresence deployment. With AOS, the customer’s in-house IT or video operations team manages scheduling, conferencing management, and reporting while an external certified Polycom service partner provides 24×7 remote system monitoring and streamlined fault management.

“Interest in telepresence continues to grow as companies across industries look to transform their organisations with better, faster, and smarter collaboration across distances,” said Geno Alissi, senior vice president and general manager of Polycom Service Division. “Telepresence deployments are reaching small and large organisations alike, each of which has unique infrastructure and IT resource capabilities and requirements. By providing greater flexibility and choice through our expanded service options and new self-service capabilities in our systems, Polycom and its certified telepresence partners can address the specific needs of a broader range of customers.”

Meanwhile, Polycom enhanced its Polycom RealPresence Experience and Polycom Telepresence Experience portfolio with a new feature called, Single Touch Multipoint, which allows users to easily initiate calls amongst multiple locations.

“With this new capability, users simply touch a single button on the RPX and TPX touch-screen executive control panel to join a meeting and the system connects the call and determines how sites appear based on automatic, optimised layout views or administrator-configured custom layouts,” Polycom said.

“Polycom is giving customers choice and flexibility in terms of how they utilise telepresence throughout their organisation,” said Andrew W. Davis, Senior Analyst and Founding Partner, Wainhouse Research. “The reality is that no single approach is going to meet the needs of all customers and Polycom is addressing that issue by allowing its partners to deliver telepresence as a fully managed service, a partially managed service to complement customer in-house IT capabilities, or as a customer-managed solution. Combined with the breadth of its solution portfolio and significant installed base, Polycom is well-positioned in the telepresence market.”

The Polycom AOS service is now available worldwide through Polycom certified telepresence service partners with suggested pricing ranging from US$1,000 – $1,250 per month based on the Polycom RPX or TPX system (annual agreement required). The new Single Touch Multipoint software is now available worldwide at no additional cost for Polycom RPX and TPX customers with a current maintenance agreement.