Poly

 

MICROSOFT WORLDWIDE PARTNER CONFERENCE, LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Jul 11, 2011 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), a global leader in unified communications (UC), today announced the Polycom® CX7000 Unified Collaboration System, the first room video telepresence solution custom-built for full integration with Microsoft Lync. The solution takes the Lync experience customers are familiar with on their desktops and recreates it in the conference room to provide a superior level of business collaboration and productivity for room telepresence. This is another step in the strategic alliance between Polycom and Microsoft Corp. to deliver enterprise-grade UC solutions.

 

The Polycom CX7000 solution (codenamed "Rally") is specifically designed to integrate with Microsoft Lync. With especially tight integration between the Polycom and Microsoft solutions, customers get an intuitive interface, simplified UC experience, and more seamless telepresence. The solution offers all the Lync features customers want (presence, IM, online meetings, content collaboration) with Polycom's industry-leading room video collaboration solutions in a single plug-and-play system. Polycom has raised the bar for UC with Lync through real-time, group document collaboration over video which no other standard-based system enables today.

 

"For us at Sebesta Blomberg, unified communications is not about saving on travel, it's about using collaboration as a competitive advantage, to drive company-wide gains in productivity, efficiency, and innovation," said JJ Brantingham, Partner and CIO at Sebesta Blomberg & Associates, a national leader in providing full-service consulting and engineering services. "We use Polycom telepresence solutions and Lync everyday in our business. Now, by bringing the best of both worlds together, we believe the Polycom CX7000 solution will make our highly collaborative environment even more ubiquitous and effective."

 

"The power of UC is to eliminate barriers to teamwork and bring people face-to-face. Polycom and Microsoft share a passion for delivering easy-to-use UC solutions that transform businesses into highly collaborative environments," said Andrew Miller, president and CEO, Polycom. "The new Polycom CX7000 room telepresence solution, custom-built to integrate with Microsoft Lync, takes the seamless, highly intuitive experience to a new level by enabling customers to connect and collaborate how, when, and where they want. Expect more of the same as Polycom continues to work with Microsoft to accelerate UC adoption."

 

The unified communications market is growing at a rapid pace. According to an independent report from Gartner, video endpoint systems are forecasted to grow at a 15.2 percent compound annual growth rate through 20151.

 

"Polycom is a strategic UC ally for Microsoft. The custom-built Polycom CX7000 system has been specifically designed for full integration with Lync. It offers a compelling and intuitive collaboration experience that bridges UC and enables businesses to be more productive," said Kirk Gregersen, senior director, Microsoft Lync. "UC has been growing rapidly, and the solutions Polycom is working with Microsoft to deliver will further drive the adoption of telepresence and Lync."

 

The CX7000 solution is part of a comprehensive line of CX devices from Polycom that are optimized for use with Microsoft Lync to enable a superior experience. Polycom also offers interoperability with Lync across the Polycom® UC Intelligent Core™ infrastructure, telepresence family (from desktop to group to fully-immersive), and voice endpoints. Polycom is committed to working with Microsoft to ensure Polycom products, including the CX7000 system, are interoperable with Microsoft's Office 365 cloud offering via Lync Online.

 

Polycom was recently named the 2011 Microsoft UC Innovation Partner of the Year and will be officially honored during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Vision keynote, as well as the Award Winners Executive Luncheon.

 

Polycom UC solutions bring people face-to-face, creating a highly collaborative environment that significantly improves learning, retention, and engagement as well as overall productivity and efficiency. Polycom helps companies of all sizes, in all industries, become high-performance workplaces where people collaborate on-demand between any location, over any network, with their device of choice to enable UCEverywhere™.

 

Polycom UC offerings include HD voice and video solutions for personal, mobile, group, and immersive telepresence experiences – using up to half the video bandwidth required by other solutions. The UC Intelligent Core is the only platform that connects up to 75,000 devices and enables 25,000 simultaneous calls with 100 percent auto-failover, providing the best-in-class user experience. With a broad ecosystem of strategic partners, Polycom provides the most comprehensive, reliable, and scalable collaboration platform for managing and delivering UC solutions to employees, partners and suppliers – on premises or from the cloud.

 

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (July 10-14 in Los Angeles), at booth #535, Polycom will demonstrate a suite of Microsoft interoperable technologies such as the Polycom® KIRK® Wireless Solutions set, Polycom® SpectraLink® 8400 Series Wireless Telephones, and Polycom® Video Management Systems. The Polycom® Open Telepresence Experience™ (OTX™) 100 solution featuring Lync interoperability will be on display at the Microsoft Business Productivity Suite, accessible on an invitation-only basis. Polycom is also a gold sponsor supporting Microsoft Office 365 programs and activities at 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

 

The Polycom CX7000 Unified Collaboration System is scheduled to be available in Q4 2011 through Polycom authorized solution providers, direct market resellers, systems integrators, service providers, and distributors.