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Polycom (www.polycom.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have declared their love, er a “global strategic agreement” for developing and marketing “integrated,” standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions. The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing. Polycom will develop a broad base of solutions [...] Yes Virginia, there was more than the Digium AsteriskExchange store announcement at IT EXPO last week. Digium also announced Switchvox SMB 4.5. Switchvox SMB 4.5 adds on Phone Feature Packs for Polycom handsets, enabling users to directly access things such as call recording, visual voicemail, a searchable company directory and call parking lots directly on a [...] Logitech, best known for its PC add-ons such as keyboards, mice, and *ding*ding* video cameras, has gone upscale, purchasing videoconferencing hardware firm LifeSize for $405 million. Does it make sense? Time will tell. LifeSize has been targeting its high-end HD video telepresence and videoconferencing solutions squarely into the enterprise space, undercutting the likes of Cisco, Polycom [...] Yesterday, Cisco announced it bought Tandberg for $3 billion. The deal effectively gives Cisco a video sales pipe into the enterprise boardroom. Speculation today is that Polycom might be next on the shopping list. It’s an interesting premise, since purchasing Polycom would give Cisco an effective lock on the videoconferencing/telepresence market AND add some sizzle to [...] Over the past two weeks, I have participated in a couple of HD-quality phone calls, using ZipDX for the connecting service and its version of X-Lite that incorporates the G.722 wideband codec. ZipDX provides a lot of value-add features for scheduling conference calls, including auto-ID of call-in participants and integration with web-based and other calendar systems. [...] One of the missing pieces out of the HD Communications puzzle is standards — yes, plural. There are plenty of codec standards, mind you, but what defines an HD phone call, really? The telecommunications industry may have to borrow from a page from the TV world at some point down the road. The lowest common denominator [...] If you don’t feel like plowing through all of the HD Communications Summit pieces, here’s a recap of what went on. 1) Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people” to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. 2) The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone call hasn’t changed [...] Unlike the start of VoIP and VON oh-so-long-ago (circa 1997), HD voice is much further down the technology path in terms of technology and deployment. Islands of HD usage are appearing at major corporations, while BT, France Telecom (FT), and T-Mobile are all deploying HD within their territories in Europe. FT expects to be able [...] At yesterday’s HD Communications Summit, most equipment manufacturers said they would like to see fewer HD codecs and an “HD voice” logo to slap on to their boxes and gear. Discussion also took place on the relative virtues of a “free” codec and the intellectual property issues associated with free codecs. Handset manufacturers Polycom and Snom [...] |
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