Polycom Community Breakfast Series – UC Everywhere – driving the shift to the Cloud
The time has come for Polycom’s Annual Community Breakfast Series! Some of you may have attended last year’s events in Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne. We received very good feedback and based on that we are holding the second Community Breakfast – starting this week on 14th October in Perth.
This year Polycom is focusing on Unified Communications and the importance of the Cloud. We’re excited to have one of the senior analysts from Frost & Sullivan – Audrey William to be a keynote speaker on UC, mobility and cloud.
I will be presenting at the Melbourne event with KPMG as our customer keynote speaker.
The events will be taking place across October with the Perth event on October 14th at the Hilton Hotel, followed by Sydney on October 20th at Doltone House, and Melbourne on October 25th at the Sofitel on Collins. If you or your colleagues would like to attend please follow this link. Sorry, but no media attendees please.
Polycom A Part Of Historic NBN Launch
Polycom A Part Of Historic NBN Launch
On Wednesday 18th May, at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Armidale, the button was officially pushed to mark the launch of the NBN (National Broadband Network) linking mainland Australia and Tasmania. This event was attended by key figures, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Senator Stephen Conroy and NBNCo CEO Mike Quigley.
This was definitely a defining moment for one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Australia. Armidale was the first release site, linking mainland Australia to Tasmania. I was fortunate to be part of that event, representing Polycom. We were called by NBNCo to help out at this event, to provide the video connection that will demonstrate the network’s capabilities.
It was amazing to see just how quickly things were pulled together; the fibre into the building was installed very efficiently. Following the configuration of the video equipment, were up and having successful Point-to-Point calls between PLC Armidale and Circular Head Christian School in Tasmania. In addition to this, we completed multi-point calls between the schools and Polycom offices in Melbourne and Sydney.
It was a high profile event, with key ministers attending as well as national press, so we had to ensure that it worked perfectly. We worked closely with NBNCo at rehearsals and during tests so that any potential issues were ironed out straight away. It was a nerve-wracking event, with live feeds across Australia and the eyes of the press on the demo. I was very pleased when the choir from the two schools connected successfully and started singing in sync! As you can imagine, working with kids was challenging. To get much testing time in, we needed to wait until the Tuesday to lock down configuration of the endpoints. With great relief Tuesday’s testing came and went with no surprises and it was really impressive to see just how well the Polycom Live Music Mode performed with the piano and kids singing.
Come the live event on Wednesday, Polycom played a central role to this event to help write a part of Australia’s history, by running the first ever video application across the NBN. With the high profile and high risk associated with this event it was great to see all parties pull this off flawlessly – whilst even using a single piano located in Armidale!
I was really impressed by the work completed by members of NBNCo, who really believe in the change that the network can help bring to Australia. It will be interesting to see just how the NBN will change the way we all live and work.
Polycom Shows the Future of Unified Communications at TEAM Polycom
I have just returned from a week in the Orlando Florida attending Polycom’s annual sales and partner conference – TEAM Polycom. It was amazing to see the focus of our company on truly revolutionizing the UC, video and voice experience. The message was clear - Telepresence is not a standalone capability, but rather a vital extension of the UC ecosystem. It was a huge event with over 800 partners and Polycom sales attending from around the world, including Polycom’s major UC ecosystem partners Microsoft, HP, IBM, Broadsoft, NEC, Siemens, and many more. We were able to see firsthand how the full suite of Polycom voice and video products natively integrates into all of these environments. While the look and feel of each was a bit different to match the UC vendor, it was amazing to see the commonality of the UC capabilities across all of these platforms. It truly gives our customers the most powerful, flexible, and open solutions, regardless of their current or future UC strategies. It was also great to see Polycom delivering on the promise of a consistent UC experience regardless of location, device or network.
Here were the highlights for me:
- Seeing the Polycom m500 Mobile Telepresence application on the Samsung Galaxy tablet. Simple UI, integration with your full suite of enterprise UC and telepresence solutions, and AMAZING video quality. The work we have done with Samsung to optimize the software to take full advantage of the processing power on the tablet really shows the difference between our approach and that of smaller software vendors writing generic apps for Android and iPhone.
- Next Gen native integration with Microsoft Lync. 720p 30fps between Lync and Polycom telepresence systems. Full Lync click to call and multi-select functionality, escalation from point-to-point to multipoint via drag and drop. Direct integration into the Outlook/Lync “Online Meeting” scheduling work flow. All with a simple software upgrade and no additional hardware
- Next generation VVX business media phones. New UI like the Polycom Touch Control, gesture based touch screen, slick integration with your PC/mouse/keyboard, 720p video, lower price points. Standards based integration with UC platforms from over 30 vendors. Beautiful.
- Eagle Eye Director. This will revolutionize the meeting room video experience. Multiple cameras automatically track and lock onto the active speaker using voice and facial recognition to provide an “immersive telepresence” view of the speaker. Camera views automatically fade between the active speakers.
- Polycom’s new Accordent solutions. The functionality of these recording, streaming and content management solutions is vastly superior to anything on the market. Great functionality, great UI, and full integration into customer’s existing front and back end recording and distribution solutions. Plus full integration with Microsoft Sharepoint and Lync is the icing on the cake.
- Polycom UC Intelligent Core enhancements. Global deployment, massive scale, fully meshed with instantaneous failover, simultaneous connection to multiple SIP and H.323 UC solutions. 75k+ registered video users, 25k+ simultaneous video calls, and 200 MCU’s acting as one. Outages are measured in single digit seconds rather than minutes or hours. Simultaneously connect to Microsoft, Avaya, Cisco, and existing H.323 video environments. Done.
- Native calling between Polycom telepresence systems and Cisco TelePresence. Full HD video and voice. Native user experience. Direct calling from Polycom HDX, RPX, OTX systems to Cisco CTS systems. All with a simple software upgrade and no additional hardware. This is what our customers and the industry have been asking for. Our open philosophy make Polycom the only company that could deliver it.
The greatest thing was seeing all of this in action. Not speeches, not slides, not flash mockups. Real live demonstrations of all of these solutions. Seeing is believing. And I’m a believer.
Things a bit shaky at Cisco?
There have been a few announcements recently that make me wonder how things are going over at Cisco. If their share price is any indicator, things don’t look so great. Being that they are a major competitor of mine, I’m not sad to see it.
Recently, their CEO John Chambers sent a memo to all employees :
http://blogs.cisco.com/news/message-from-john-chambers-where-cisco-is-taking-the-network/
Even though it was a memo to employees, it is clear that this was a memo to the press, analysts and shareholders to try to stop the bleeding. In it, he basically describes how they have gotten off track and promises to make changes to focus on the customer and employees and make it easier to work with Cisco. These are the type of things you hear from big companies all the time. My favorite part – at the end he asks employees what they would like the company to be. Then he proceeds to tell them exactly what they will be! Classic.
A few days later, it seems plans are being put in place and executed. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen.
From the sounds of it, Cisco is getting out of the consumer business, closing down its Flip video product line and cutting staff. Additionally, their consumer video conferencing product, Umi, will now fall under their enterprise telepresence business. The product is not an enterprise grade product, so this move seems a bit strange. And a recent negative evaluation of this product by industry analysts Wainhouse makes me wonder about the future of this product overall.
So, change is coming. Time will tell whether they can make changes and get refocused. You can probably guess where I will place my bet!
Skype – friend or foe?
It’s pretty easy for those of us selling videoconferencing solutions to criticise Skype, however I think it’s important to acknowledge the part Skype has played in mainstream open standards conferencing. While it is true to say there are compelling reasons to avoid Skype as a business critical tool (lack of interoperability, lack of support, lack of guaranteed uptime and so on), Skype and other such free desktop applications are, I am sure, the platform many of us used as their first video application.
While using these platforms we were amazed that we could actually see someone remotely over the internet and it didn’t occur to us that the quality was any less than it could be. This set the concept that video was something special. Interestingly (probably because they were free!) it wasn’t a problem that every system was proprietary – if you had Skype and someone else had MSN, you would just install MSN and get on with it.
Fast forward five years, and things are somewhat different – where Skype definitely plays a big part in the same market as it always did, the commercial market has improved beyond all recognition. IT departments demand low maintenance, high security, high availability, high reliability, high definition (often the higher the better) tools which will ‘talk’ to other vendors’ equipment. The expectation in many, if not all, cases is that video will work perfectly every time, no matter where you are dialling. And this, no matter how attractive something free looks, is where you get what you pay for.
Top 5 things you need to know about implementing video on your network
This year, I would like to provide you all with more content to get you thinking about the possibilities that UC brings, and to invite guests to present their views in this blog.
With this in mind, let’s start with a very talented and knowledgeable Solutions Architect – Jac Jenner. Jac has been working on implementing UC solutions for three and a half years, and brings to you the 5 basic steps on implementing video on your network. Feel free to make comments and questions. We would both love to hear from you.
Cheers,
James
Quality/utilization of network is so important that it could almost be all top 5, however… these are the key points which are at the top of my list:
1. If you don’t have available network bandwidth on your WAN there is little point trying to implement video; you will most likely have a poor experience with varied results which will not result in confident adoption. However, given that there are very few ‘perfect’ networks around, there are a few things that can be done to help work around a marginal network situation…
2. Use a gatekeeper – although many manufacturer’s gatekeeper products can do other things as well (reporting/scheduling/management, etc, such as the Polycom CMA), one of the main functions of the gatekeeper itself is to implement Call Admission Control. This enables restrictions to be made which will prevent calls being made over and above the allowed rate available on any given link, helping protect bandwidth, and quality of experience.
3. Use technology designed to help in poor network situations – an example of this is Polycom’s Lost Packet Recovery, which uses error correction technology to mask up to 5% packet loss with no visible change to the picture. This is tremendously useful for both intranet calls on an imperfect WAN, and also calls across the internet, the biggest network of all, and with no guarantees whatsoever.
4. Scale correctly for your requirements – while there can be quite a gap between required capabilities and the capabilities which fit the budget, it is critical to the success of the implementation that you can provide capacity for the right amount of resources; implementing a bridge is fantastic but implementing a bridge and then giving customers/employees desktop video causing no bridge availability, not so much.
5. Change management and adoption training. It is tough for even the most successful technical implementation to succeed unless the people using it know it is there, know what it is for, and know how to use it – plan, plan, and plan again, then follow through until the video network is absolutely visible across the business.
Polycom announces interoperability with Cisco Telepresence Systems via TIP
Great news for the UC Industry and our customers! Polycom announced today the interoperability with Cisco Telepresence Systems via TIP (Telepresence Interoperability Protocol). This press release is great news for the industry and for any customers who have, or are considering a combination of Polycom standards based systems and Cisco proprietary TelePresence systems. By the midpoint of 2011, customers will be able to make calls between their Polycom HDX room and personal telepresence systems and ATX/OTX/TPX Immersive Telepresence systems and Cisco CTS TelePresence units. One of the largest hurdles our industry and customers face is how to get all of their equipment to work together. Obviously standards are the best way to achieve this, but in the absence of standards, this is the next best thing.
This capability will be available as a simple software upgrade with no hardware additions or upgrades required. The Polycom systems will natively integrate Cisco’s TIP protocol for direct communication and connection to the Cisco systems.
Additionally, in the latter half of 2011, Polycom’s RMX unified conference bridge will incorporate TIP, allowing further functionality including:
- Connection of ANY standards based video system from ANY vendor on ANY standard (CIP, H.323, ISDN)
- Continuous Presence layouts for all systems, including Cisco CTS systems – an upgrade from the sub optimal voice switching capability available today
- Connection of UC solutions from other vendors such as Microsoft and IBM
- Connection to Polycom’s Real Presence Experience (RPX) fully immersive telepresence systems
This is a huge step forward for the industry. It will be the first time that Cisco CTS systems can effectively communicate with other systems without compromising the experience. Hopefully we will see more of this from Polycom and others in the industry (hello Google, Apple, Skype?) so that we can truly connect from any location, any device, any time.
CIO forum hosted by IDG Media
Today I had the pleasure of participating in a global CIO forum hosted by IDG Media (publishers of Computerworld and CIO magazines), entitled LEVERAGING UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS FOR INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY AND ROI. This forum brought together over 80 participants in San Jose, Washington DC, Seattle, Beijing, London, Sydney, Singapore in a real time, world spanning meeting through the use of Polycom’s Immersive Telepresence technology. The meeting brought together panelists who are leaders in shaping the UC industry including:
• Andrew M. Miller, President, Chief Executive Officer & Member of the Board, Polycom, Inc.
• Joseph B. Burton, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy & Technology Officer, Polycom, Inc.
• Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President, Office Lync & Speech Group, Microsoft
• Ali Shadman, VP & Chief Technologist, Global Technology Consulting, Hewlett-Packard Company
First, I have to say that the meeting experience was exceptional. Hats off to the Polycom videoconferencing technology and to the Video Network Operations Center (VNOC). The voice and video clarity was extremely life like. During the discussion sessions, we were able to see all 80 participants on the screen at the same time which helped see peoples’ reactions and participation. During the panelist talks, their rooms were displayed in full life size representation so you could really see the details of the presenter. This all happened fluidly. Additional services like live translation helped to include participants from all over the globe in real time.
Below are some of the key messages that I took away from each of the panelists:
• Gurdeep – Gurdeep began by praising the experience of this meeting and stating that this is the communications wave of the future. He also stressed the desktop as a critical component of meetings like this and the desktop will truly be what expands UC. Furhter, he commented that the value of integrating communication into business processes is latent value that has yet been unlocked. Unlocking that value reduces organizational inefficiency. Organizations need to unlock the power of the technology pieces that they already have deployed – Sharepoint, Active Directory, Exchange, OCS. Finally, from a personal note, he talked about how communications mobility has changed his (and other executives) ability to conduct business. Communications tools following you where you are at any time unlocks huge potential. “[sic] Microsoft is not a software company. It is not a communications company. Microsoft is a productivity company. It just happens that the latest wave of increasing productivity is via real time communication like voice and video.”
• Joe – Joe’s message was quite simple – there are 3 things organizations need to do:
o Create a vision of what you want from your communications strategy
o Take an inventory of what technologies you have already deployed
o Develop a plan to integrate all of this using standards based technology and class leading integrators
• Ali – HP’s customers are looking to HP to help them understand the dynamics of not only their technology, but more importantly their business. They count on HP to help transform both of these to get the maximum return on investment. HP provides a business value assessment service. They evaluate and explain business areas that can be impacted by technology, and help the customer understand the actual value they can achieve. They work with their customers to set the vision, plan and implement solution, and finally drive the value. “[sic] Communications technology is no longer tactical, it is strategic”. Finally, he stressed the need to design serviceability into the solution from the beginning. This allows HP to provide superior class of service.
• Andy – Andy stressed the need for native interoperability to truly enable the technology to provide business benefits. The partnership of Polycom, Microsoft, and HP provides the full solution to customers using best attributes of all 3 customers – the best HD voice and video, the best desktop experience, and the best consulting, implementation and service.
Finally, there was a case study presented by Chris Clark, CIO of Brookfield Multiplex, from Sydney. Brookfield is a global real estate investment, development, and management company with major locations in Canada, US, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Communications was a key during the recent merger of Brookfield (North America) and Multiplex (Australia, EMEA). OCS was the core of the communications integration across the companies via federation. They have implemented OCS at the desktop as well as integrating Polycom video with OCS. They have multiple video rooms at their sites and most are booked solid. “[sic] UC has strengthened our ability to quote, plan, and deliver a building. If we can deliver a building ahead of schedule, that’s how we make money. UC helps us do that.” The sessions were highly interactive with all CIO’s present getting the opportunity to share their views and experiences with UC and to ask questions from these experts. This format was far better than a standard canned presentation and truly engaged all participants actively. It highlighted the value of high quality, real time voice and video communication for sessions such as this. One of the most interesting things to see was the interaction between the panelists from HP, MSFT, and Polycom.
The messages were quite clear and the discussion points were handed off between the companies seamlessly. You could see that they were on the same page and very comfortable discussing the UC market together. It was evident that there is a genuine relationship between them. Too many times, in partnerships like this, you can clearly see that the executives are not very close and don’t understand the partnership’s value proposition. It was great to see that the relationships between Polycom, HP, and MSFT runs far deeper. Together, we have developed a clear vision for the UC industry. Our customers will truly benefit from our unified approach to the market.
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The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed.Live Global Webcast: Delivering on the Promise of Unified Communications with Polycom CEO Andrew Miller and Polycom CSO/CTO Joe Burton
On November 9th, Polycom will hold a Global Webcast in which CEO Andy Miller and CSO Joe Burton will give some significant, industry-defining announcements, this is a must for anyone involved in the UC industry. There will be a session at 1pm (Sydney time). Click here to check the invitation and add it to your calendar!
Polycom Wows Partners and Customers with Solution Center Launches in Melbourne!!
The day is finally here!! The months of hard work have paid off. A couple of weeks ago, Polycom launched our new Technical Solutions Center in Melbourne and CEO Andy Miller, joined by Parliamentary Secretary Jaala Pulford, kicked off the event with a welcome address and ceremonial ribbon cutting. Also at the grand opening were Polycom Open Collaboration Network members Microsoft, Juniper, Aruba, BroadSoft, and Avaya; senior executives from several customers and partners; Polycom APAC President Hansjoerg Wagner, and Managing Director of Polycom Australia and New Zealand Michael Chetner.
First of its kind in APAC, and third in the world, the Polycom Open Telepresence Experience (OTX) 300 was the sensation of this event. The Melbourne OTX system—which was connected to the Polycom OTX system in Seattle to demonstrate the power of immersive telepresence in delivering the most true-to-life meeting room experience—proved to be a tremendous crowd pleaser.
Polycom customer Australian National University School of Music performed a virtual classical music performance with high definition sound and video to demonstrate that video conferencing is no longer just for the boardroom or for face-to-face meetings, but can be extended to a wide variety of applications such as live streamed concerts, instrumental and vocal lessons, and masterclasses. Attendees also heard from another Polycom customer, the Victorian Department of Education, and from Rod Tucker, director of the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society.
We took the guests through the Solution Center to see the power of video solutions from the desktop through to high-end immersive telepresence solutions integrated with UC solutions from Polycom Open Collaboration Network partners. They also saw real-life application demonstrations which highlighted Polycom’s collaborative communication solutions.
See the video below for details. We are proud to have this solutions center available for our customers and partners. And I’m happy that I can finally get back to business as usual (and maybe actually see my family too)!
