Poly

 

Seoul, Korea - Nov 09, 2011 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in standards-based unified communications (UC), announced that the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) recently deployed Polycom's comprehensive UC solutions, including the Polycom® RealPresence™ Platform, for its 'Cyber Convergence Research/Education Improvement Project.' The project is designed to offer Korean university students a higher quality of education and a more interactive research environment by using visual collaboration technologies to connect eight science and engineering universities across the country.

 

A growing number of educational institutions worldwide are using Polycom UC solutions to deliver visual e-learning, including Cornell University, Georgetown University, University Paris-Descartes, and the Australian National University. These institutions bring teachers, instructors, lecturers, students and content providers together face-to-face, regardless of location and time, through HD video conferencing. The Polycom HD video solutions provide the richest educational experience available outside of a classroom to enhance their curricula, stimulate interaction between instructors and students, and improve learning.

 

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), a public agency under the Ministry of Educational Science and Technology, understands the value of visual collaboration. The Institute deployed Polycom's UC solutions as part of its 'Cyber Lab Platform' upgrade project, which is designed to reinforce the value of education and research through remote collaboration using HD voice, video and telepresence solutions. The project connects the Global Engineers' Education Centre at Seoul National University with seven other science and engineering universities, including Gangwon National University, Chungnam National University, Gyungbuk National University, Busan National University, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonnam National University, and KISTI.

 

KISTI selected the Polycom RealPresence Platform for this project, including the Universal Video Collaboration and Video Content Management components. The RealPresence Platform delivers the essential provisioning, management, system interoperability, redundancy, and scalability that CIOs require, and the reliability, security, and lifelike quality that users demand, all of which drives higher productivity, adoption rates, and return on investment. Built on open standards, the Polycom RealPresence Platform is backward-compatible with legacy systems and forward-compatible with new, emerging systems, protecting KISTI's existing IT investments, driving down total cost of ownership and accelerating ROI by using as much as 50 percent less bandwidth. These savings were key deciding factors for KISTI in favor of Polycom.

 

The high-definition quality of Polycom's UC solutions, ease-of-use and content sharing capabilities make lectures more engaging and interactive. Students can communicate face-to-face in real-time over distances, creating a "same room" environment to enhance e-learning. In addition, the ability to record, archive and stream video conferences for lectures provides on-demand access to content and subject matter experts, and has proven highly valuable to both educators and students.

 

"We are seeing increased demand for the technology and more uses of it from broadcasting live lectures to simulating and streaming video discussions in real-time, hosting virtual events and consulting on research and development projects," said Mr. Haeng Jin Jang, Ph.D, chief principal of Global Science Experimental Data Hub Center, KISTI. "We plan to expand the solution to cover a wider variety of educational programs, such as second year science and technology projects, and reach a broader network of universities across Korea, in addition to customizing research link-ups between our educators, medical institutions and field researchers," he added.

 

"Polycom is a leader in distance education globally, providing compelling UC solutions for educators designed to enrich the entire learning experience and creating virtual global classrooms of the future," said Dae-Jun Shin, country manager of Polycom Korea. "It is fantastic to see that customers such as KISTI are benefiting from our solutions through real-time communication and collaboration to significantly enhance education."