ORLANDO, Fla., PLEASANTON, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 28, 2011 — Polycom Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), a global leader in unified communications (UC), and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) continue to help change the way organizations communicate. Together they are enabling customers to be present, virtually anytime and anywhere, while reaping substantial cost, efficiency and productivity advantages from integrated UC solutions combining Microsoft Lync and Polycom.
Joint customer LA Fitness is already benefiting from the strategic alliance between Microsoft and Polycom.
“Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a road map that delivers interoperable UC solutions to help transform enterprise communications, and they are delivering,” said Rich Costello, senior research analyst, IDC. “Since its public launch in November 2010, Lync 2010 continues to gain significant traction with end users. It’s very promising for the industry when we see customers like LA Fitness improve productivity, enhance team collaboration, and save money by deploying these flexible, high-quality, multivendor UC solutions.”
Helping Customers Lower Expenses, Enhance Productivity and Improve the Bottom Line
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LA Fitness – North America sports club network, LA Fitness implemented Microsoft and Polycom UC solutions as its primary voice platform, and found it provides better quality, reliability and fault-tolerance than its previous mix of traditional private branch exchange (PBX) telephony systems and an open-source voice over IP (VoIP) solution. Implementing the Microsoft and Polycom UC solutions is also saving LA Fitness over $500,000 and improved customer service.
“The Microsoft and Polycom UC solutions allowed us to replace our existing telephone system with a more reliable, fuller featured solution, with the added benefit of truly unified communications,” said George Bedar, chief information officer for LA Fitness. “Essentially, we solved all of our telecommunication problems, with real-time instant messaging, presence, conferencing and integration with our other line of business applications. We also federated some of these applications with our partners and vendors, enabling even broader team collaboration and greater efficiencies. We look forward to extending our UC capabilities to video and other forms of enhanced collaboration.”
Microsoft and Polycom Extending the Promise of UC Virtually Anytime, Anywhere
Unlike others, the combination of Microsoft and Polycom solutions deliver a complete, high-definition, interoperable and standards based end-to-end UC solution for voice, video, conferencing and collaboration. Polycom and Microsoft continue to deliver a shared vision for UC. Microsoft collaborates with Polycom’s R&D to help enhance support for Lync features on Polycom’s entire line of Microsoft-optimized UC solutions, including Polycom telepresence solutions that require up to 50 percent less bandwidth than other systems; desktop and conference phones and UC devices featuring unrivalled HDVoice™ clarity; and a scalable and resilient supporting infrastructure, the Polycom UC Intelligent Core, that allows users to connect anytime, anywhere using different devices.
The Polycom video solutions also incorporate Microsoft’s real-time video (RTV) codec, enabling communications throughout enterprises as well as B2B environments and across multiple collaboration tools. With this natively integrated solution, companies can lower their total cost of ownership, streamline IT management, and improve redundancy protection. Further, Polycom will innovate by offering Lync voice and video solutions that support CCCP (Centralized Conference Control Protocol), which will allow the Polycom endpoints to be easily controlled from Lync, letting users take full advantage of the rich user interface Microsoft provides and enabling users to connect anytime, anywhere.
Polycom and Microsoft will be exhibiting at Enterprise Connect Orlando, and will highlight their UC solutions. Please visit Polycom in booth no. 671 and Microsoft in booth no. 808.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. is a global leader in unified communications solutions with industry-leading telepresence, video, voice and infrastructure solutions built on open standards. Polycom powers smarter conversations, transforming lives and businesses worldwide. Please visit www.polycom.com for more information or connect with Polycom on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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