Solution Enables Cloud-Delivered Video-as-a-Service Efficiently at Scale and Fully Integrated into Operations and Billing Systems

Polycom, Inc., the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), has announced in a news release, significant enhancements to the Polycom® RealPresence™ Platform that will enable service providers to more easily and cost-effectively deliver Video-as-a-Service (Vaas) offerings at scale to businesses of all sizes.

With new features such as multi-tenancy support and a suite of open APIs that enable service providers to get to market faster with custom and plug-in applications, Polycom is driving down the cost and complexity of building and managing a public or private video cloud. In addition, Polycom also announced new enhancements to the RealPresence Platform that improve the scalability, manageability, and secure delivery of video collaboration to organisations across every industry sector.

The new service provider features of the Polycom RealPresence Platform are designed to meet a surging market demand for differentiated, cloud-delivered video and UC services that can scale to serve tens of thousands of concurrent customers. Increasingly, video collaboration is being delivered through the cloud, enabling even more organisations to reap the benefits of face-to-face video collaboration – including increased productivity and engagement, business continuity, improved training, and even industry-specific uses such as distance learning and telemedicine.
More than a dozen service providers, including Airtel, BT, China Unicom, 8×8 and Vietnam Post and Telecommunications are already using the RealPresence Platform infrastructure to power their VaaS offerings.

With today’s announcement, Polycom is enabling services providers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and customers to leverage Polycom open APIs and software development kits (SDKs) to test, create, and ultimately deliver new compelling software applications and solutions that integrate with the RealPresence Platform – the most comprehensive and interoperable software infrastructure for universal video collaboration – to provide even more value to customers. The new APIs will help service providers speed the delivery of new services by simplifying the task of integrating the Polycom RealPresence Platform with their operations and billing support systems (OSS/BSS), as well as third-party management systems for scheduling, billing and rating; video collaboration provisioning; resource reporting in-conference control; and system management.

“Video collaboration is the language of business and many small- to medium-sized businesses are increasingly looking to have video collaboration delivered as a service, moving it from a cap-ex to op-ex model,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom President of Products and Services. “Service providers are in a unique position to capitalise on this opportunity to increase their revenues and market presence in UC collaboration. Polycom’s platform, solutions, and APIs meet the specific needs of service providers and provide them the flexibility to accelerate time to market with unique, customised applications and services for customers across vertical industries. In addition, we’ve also upgraded our RealPresence Platform to provide the scale and manageability required for service providers to deliver robust, carrier-class VaaS offerings. Polycom’s vision is to make video collaboration ubiquitous, and we believe we’re delivering on that vision with software-led innovations that brings video collaboration to new platforms such as cloud, mobile and social platforms.”