Polycom recently announced a potentially lucrative partnership that sees their video communications solutions teamed up with Microsoft’s unified communications (UC) solutions such as Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange.
As Polycom Senior Vice President put it, “Polycom and Microsoft are aligned in making people more productive and helping organisations become more efficient and competitive through improved communication and collaboration.”
“Polycom’s integrated solution for Microsoft unified communications environments puts [video conferencing] within the familiar Microsoft applications that millions of people use every day.”
Polycom and Microsoft are definitely leading names in the fields of video conferencing and desktop time and information management respectively and this deal could see both names be carried over into the others domain.
A complete line of Polycom VoIP phones, designed specifically to work with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, is to be launched later this year.
With Polycom Conferencing for Outlook, users can incorporate desktop video conferencing into their meetings and allow invited participants to join links inserted into the meeting invitation notification. A variety of video devices can be used including the Polycom HDX 4000, or room-based video conferencing systems like the Polycom HDX 8000 Series.
In addition, Polycom’s flexible platforms allow people to join video-enabled meetings by phone.
Polycom have stated that the enhanced solutions are planned to be launched in the second quarter of 2010.
Full press release here.
A recent report by US technology analyst firm IDC, has highlighted the fact that due to the growth and accessibility of VoIP Communications, by the end of 2010 there will be 1 billion people working from mobile locations.
Actual predictions of the report state that by the end of 2013, the figure will rise to 1.2 billion – over than a third of the world’s current workforce. The majority of the growth will come from the Asian/Pacific economies where interest in VoIP and Unified Communications (UC) is particularly strong.
The report goes on to make some interesting predictions for the future including,
- the U.S. while not having the the greatest growth or greatest volume of workers over the next 4 years, will have the highest concentration of mobile workers with 75% of the U.S. workforce being mobile by 2013.
- Western Europe’s mobile workforce growing by 6% to surpass the U.S. workforce with 129.5 million mobile workers compared to the 119.7 milion in the US.
- Japan will reach the sustainable limit of it’s ability make workers mobile by 2013 – 49.3 million workers will be mobile.
These figures are quite staggering when put into the context of the VoIP industry as it is now and is a healthy recommendation for any company looking to invest in VoIP telephone systems for their company.
The report has been put together as 5 year forecast of the mobile worker population covering office-based, non-office-based, and home-based workers.
To read the full press release and report, visit the IDC website here
Recently rumbling from across the pond at Skype have revealed that a new Skype iPhone 3G app is on the horizon.
The news was announced by Skype towards the end of January and recent updates on the Skype blog have filled in a few more blanks.
While issues have been raised as to phone companies, who generally charge the customers through multi-minute packages, teaming up with a company that offers free-to-no-much calling via IP connections, it can’t be ignored that this could potentially be a massive win for the business market.
There seems to be an upward trend in modern media companies to offer their staff company iPhones and with the benefit of low-cost, “cd-quality” communication being available, the trend can only continue upwards as companies see an opportunity to cut costs.
Hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg – here’s to modern smartphone culture linking up with the growing VoIP market.
Full article via DSLReports.com can be found here
