New APIs along with enhanced scalability, manageability, and security upgrades to its UC software platform extend Polycom’s leadership in making video collaboration ubiquitous across major industry segments
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Jul 16, 2012 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), today took a major step forward in its vision to help drive the adoption, delivery, and management of UC and video collaboration for enterprises, governments, and organizations focused on healthcare, education, and manufacturing, with a rich new suite of open APIs that facilitate the development of custom applications and extend the value of the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform – the most comprehensive and interoperable UC software infrastructure for universal video collaboration. In addition, Polycom also announced new enhancements to its UC software platform including the new Polycom® RealPresence® Resource Manager and support for Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers that improve the scalability, manageability, and secure delivery of video collaboration across organizations.
With today’s announcement, Polycom is providing independent software vendors (ISVs), channel partners, customers, and service providers with open APIs and software development kits (SDKs) to test, create, and ultimately deliver new software applications and solutions that integrate with the RealPresence Platform and provide added value to a video collaboration environment. Aimed at making video collaboration easier to integrate into everyday business processes, the suite of APIs allows developers within enterprises and organizations to tailor applications to seamlessly integrate with Polycom RealPresence video solutions such as provisioning, scheduling, conference management, billing, and resource reporting.
“At McAfee, we are extremely serious about our promise to keep our customers safe,” said David Piekarski, senior manager, global telecommunications operations at McAfee. “We achieve this through proactive solutions that secure the digital world for our millions of customers. Through Polycom video collaboration solutions, we are able to engage multiple, globally distributed engineers to support our most critical cases. With the advent of the new software updates to the platform, especially the open APIs, we envision being able to far more easily and cleanly integrate the software we use to support our customers.”
APIs Extend the Value of Polycom Video Collaboration Solutions
Specific examples of applications leveraging Polycom APIs and extending the value of the Polycom platform include:
- myVRM, an ISV that specializes in Web-based multi-level scheduling solutions, developed a new application using Polycom APIs that makes it easier for customers to schedule videoconferencing meetings. The application allows meetings to be scheduled from one centralized calendar using a personal information manager interface, a Web interface, or through iOS or Android integration. “With the new Polycom open APIs, we were able to easily develop a video scheduling application that further extends the usage and benefits of video collaboration across any industry,” Larry Roher, CEO of myVRM. “Our application enables businesses to be more efficient when it comes to scheduling videoconferencing meetings, which helps to drive adoption and a higher ROI.”
- A leading Polycom education customer is currently developing applications to integrate video network monitoring into their monitoring system to view everything on one console, as well as a “bill back” application for the 10 colleges that use video collaboration services to create a pay-as-you-use video collaboration model.
- ISV partner ProtonMedia, a leading 3D virtual collaboration provider for the enterprise, is integrating Polycom video into its ProtoSphere platform, which allows users to participate in virtual collaboration rooms using an avatar and live video streams. “ProtonMedia decided to partner with Polycom because they offered the best-of-breed video collaboration solution and the most open developer ecosystem in which we could engage,” said Ron Burns, CEO, ProtonMedia.
- With API support, companies can create applications that securely deliver advanced conference control features for users, such as conference start and stop, mute, and record.
- Polycom customers have expressed interest in creating a custom virtual meeting room application for Video-as-a-Service offerings, as well as directory applications that connect multiple directory platforms.
- Vertical market segments – including healthcare, education, government, manufacturing, and finance – can benefit from new custom applications that integrate directly with Polycom’s UC platform. For example, in a hospital environment, a custom application could alert network administrators when a trauma video call is initiated, ensuring that on-demand, white-glove service support is available at the time needed most.
“Polycom has a dedicated focus on scaling video collaboration through a commitment to open standards, interoperability, new APIs, and a focus on a simple experience for end users and IT administrators,” said Zeus Kerravala, CEO of ZKResearch. “This latest release enables both enterprises and service providers to deliver secure, high-quality video collaboration within the office as well as to on-the-go mobile users. The increase in use of video endpoints will further the value of video investments that are already in place and add to the ‘network effect,’ helping to make video a mainstream collaboration tool.”
ISVs and enterprise customers can obtain the new APIs and SDKs at developer.polycom.com, where they can also create and/or test custom solutions in a “digital sandbox” and participate in various industry discussion forums with other developers. Polycom is also introducing new professional services to support this program, including consulting support for existing customer IT resources, API software development, and full custom API software development for a specific project.
"As more organizations realize the benefits of collaborating face-to-face by video from anywhere – benefits such as increased productivity, improved engagement, and reduced operational and travel costs – they want to fully incorporate video into their business processes and workflows to make usage as easy as possible,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President of Products and Services, Polycom. “Our new suite of APIs for the RealPresence Platform will provide this integration and give customers greater flexibility to innovate as they further build out their video collaboration networks to drive significant business value. At the same time, we’re delivering more scalability and manageability to IT administrators who are looking to video-enable their organizations.”
Increased Manageability and Scalability of Video Collaboration Networks
Another enhancement to the RealPresence Platform announced today is the new Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager, a new scheduling, management, and provisioning solution that significantly increases the scalability of the platform by 100 percent to allow a single RealPresence Resource Manager to support up to 10,000 devices including room and immersive systems, tablets, smartphones, laptops, and executive video desktops. The RealPresence Resource Mana
