Putting the 'Unified' in Unified Communications

Polycom has rebranded its Intelligent Core platform as RealPresence, as part of its push to encourage interoperability between competitive systems in the Unified Communications (UC) sector.

Collaboration based on open standards is seen as a key policy for the company, with bosses setting an objective of growing revenue from US$1.5 billion to US$3 billion ‘in the next few years’ on the back of the strategy.

Michael Chetner, vice president of APAC for Polycom, says recent technology trends have suited Polycom’s open standards approach.

"One of the biggest drivers in the market is mobility,” Chetner says.

"Now everyone has a smartphone or an iPad, that’s driving a lot of demand.”

Chetner says this is due to the network effect, whereby users of a service benefit from the number of other users.

"We’re at a tipping point now. Everyone has these devices and they want to be able to talk to each other as simply as they would make a local call between two different networks.”

Polycom already integrates with Microsoft’s Lync, as well as with the Engage platform offered by ‘social business’ software company, Jive.

"Our platform is open to be integrated,” Chetner says.

"Whether that be a telco or a social media player, as long they’re based on standards it’ll work with our system.

"It will only be the others putting barriers up.”