Profile: Polycom Inc (PLCM.O)

Polycom, Inc. (Polycom), incorporated on December 13, 1990, offers solutions for voice, video and content sharing and a line of support and service solutions. The Company operates in Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC) geographic segments. The Company's video, voice and content-management and content-sharing solutions include applications for mobile devices, browser-based video collaboration, cloud-delivered services, conference room systems, home/work office solutions and immersive telepresence, as well as industry-specific solutions, such as specialized video carts and solutions for healthcare, education and manufacturing. The Company offers various products and solutions, which include UC Group Systems, UC Platform and UC Personal Devices. UC Group Systems includes group video, group voice and immersive telepresence systems. UC Platform includes universal collaboration servers, virtualization management (distributed media optimization), resource management, recording and streaming, and remote access technologies that constitute the RealPresence Platform. UC Personal Devices includes group video, group voice and immersive telepresence systems.

UC Group Systems

The Company's UC group systems offer customers communication capability that enables geographically dispersed individuals to communicate. The RealPresence Group Series solution, Polycom HDX personal and room-based video solutions, RealPresence Centro, RealPresence Immersive Studio and RealPresence OTXStudio, consist of a portfolio of room and immersive telepresence video conferencing systems. Customers have multiple options to incorporate hard disk (HD) data sharing and collaboration into a video conference. The Polycom People+Content family of peripherals, including Polycom Concierge allows users of RealPresence Centro, RealPresence Group Series, HDX, RealPresence Desktop, and RealPresence Mobile products to incorporate content, documents and audiovisual effects into their video conferencing sessions. Polycom Concierge, which is deployable across a range of Polycom devices provides one-touch dialing to scheduled calls and basic call control (mute calls, volume control, drop callers, etc.). The Polycom intelligent accessories include the Polycom EagleEye Director camera, which changes the face of group video communications by enabling close-up views of every speaker in a video conference, regardless of their location or the number of people in the room, with automated and directed camera pan, tilt and zoom; the Polycom EagleEye Producer technology, which frames all participants in the meeting and reports data on the quantity of participants in each room; the Polycom UC Board and Polycom VisualBoard technologies, which integrates white boarding into various video collaboration meetings, and RealPresence Touch device, which eliminates the need for a remote control with a graphical touch interface that simplifies content capture and sharing. TheRealPresence Group Convene solution pairs with RealPresence Group Series systems to provide a HD voice, video and content sharing solution for personal workspaces and huddle room applications. Polycom RealPresence Debut is an enterprise grade video conferencing solution for huddle rooms and smaller spaces in small to medium sized businesses.

The Company's packaged solutions include RealPresence Group Series codecs and provide full video collaboration that can be leveraged for both horizontal and vertical use cases, including Healthcare (RealPresence Practitioner Cart 8000), Education (RealPresence EduCart 500), Judicial (RealPresence VideoProtect 500) and Manufacturing (RealPresence Utility Cart 500). The Company provides conference phones that integrate with its video solutions or can be used independently to conduct voice conference calls. Its conference phone offerings include the Polycom VoiceStation conference phones for smaller rooms, Polycom SoundStation conference phones for midsize rooms, and Polycom SoundStation IP conference phones for conference room solutions using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony networks. It offers over 40 voice and video solutions that integrate with Skype for Business and Lync 2013, so Microsoft users can select a name on a Skype for Business contact list and instantly begin collaborating through a RealPresence video or audio. It also has a range of Unified Communications (UC) solutions for Microsoft Office 365, including Polycom VVX business media phones. The RealPresence Group Series and RealPresence Trio solutions directly integrate with Skype for Business. The Polycom CX8000 solution is a Skype for Business optimized video conferencing room system that includes presence, contact search, instant messaging, HD video conferencing, HD audio, virtual white boarding, touch display-powered presentations, application sharing, editing on shared documents, and more. Tight integration with Microsoft Outlook helps users, both in the meeting room and remote participants, and start and manages meetings, among others. The CX8000 room system for Skype for Business includes various features that help users to leverage the open standards-based scalable video coding (SVC) implementation. The PolycomCX3000 IP conference phone is optimized for Skype for Business and features embedded Skype for Business software, delivering a familiar user interface and functionality for conference call participants. The Polycom CX5100 and CX5500 systems are Skype for Business-qualified, 360-degree panoramic 1080Pixels (p) HD video collaboration camera and phone combination that delivers a center-of-the-table experience and Polycom HD Voice technology. The CX5100 system can be used in conjunction with the CX8000 solution, as well as with computers through a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection. The RealPresence Platform is a video infrastructure qualified on Skype for Business and through the Polycom RealConnect technology, the platform enables customers with Skype for Business clients, Polycom-certified Skype for Business products, Polycom endpoints, and even competitive endpoints.

UC Personal Devices

The Company's UC personal devices extend clear, HD voice, video and content to desktops, home offices, mobile users and branch sites. Organizations use the Company's personal video solutions in a range of use cases. The RealPresence Group Convene solution pairs with RealPresence Group Series systems to provide a HD voice, video and content sharing solution for personal workspaces and huddle room applications. The RealPresence Desktop solution brings desktop conferencing to various personal computers (PCs) and can be purchased as individual licenses. In addition, the RealPresence Desktop client can pair with the RealPresence Group Series systems using Polycom Concierge technologies. As part of its UC platform product line, the RealPresence Desktop client is a desktop video conferencing solution, supporting both PCs and Macs that is centrally deployed through the RealPresence Resource Manager software application. The VVX business media phones combine telephony, one-touch video and integrated business applications. This portfolio of devices includes the VVX 1500 executive phone, the VVX 600 premium phone for managers and administration staff, the VVX 500 performance phone for knowledge professionals, the VVX 410/400 mid-range, the VVX 310/300 entry-level, VVX 201/101 entry-level and single-line, VVX Expansion Modules for administrators and the VVX USB Camera accessory to instantly turn the VVX 500/600 into a video phone. The VVX D60 wireless handset works in conjunction with VVX business media phones to provide mobility and extension of the media phone capabilities to users on the move. These UC devices are equipped with all of the capabilities of a full-featured Polycom SoundPoint IP conference phone, including multiple lines and Polycom HD Voice technology. The VVX business media phones are Skype for Business-qualified and feature Microsoft Outlook and Calendar integration, Web-based provisioning, USB expansion ports and an open application development environment to allow third-party development of interoperable applications. VVX phones are the business media phones for Office 365 Cloud PBX. The SoundPoint series of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) desktop devices provides audio quality and various features to address the desktop communications requirements of businesses. The VoIP ecosystem includes call management suppliers for on-premises call servers and soft-switches for network-based call server platforms. Through its VoIP Interoperability Partner (VIP) program, it has established relationships with over 30 technology partners for VoIP call managers to collaborate in the development, marketing and distribution of its VoIP products.

The Company also provides video collaboration and content sharing on a range of mobile devices. The RealPresence Mobile application, which is a free-to-download software solution, extends its HD video collaboration technology, built on the RealPresence Platform, beyond the office and conference room to over 10 Apple OS X and Android powered smartphones and tablets. It supports collaboration features on mobile devices, such as content sharing, far-end camera control, and SmartPairing technology, which lets users control video meetings with their tablets and transfer a live video call from tablet to big screen with the swipe of a finger, as well as share content stored on the device or pulled from the Web or even the user's cloud storage location. In addition, the tablet can be used as an electronic whiteboard, as well as for annotation on other content sources. The Company's cloud-based UC solutions include private clouds, on-premises; private clouds, off-premises, and public clouds, off-premises.

UC Platform

The Company's RealPresence Platform is its infrastructure offering for universal video collaboration, powering Polycom's HD video solutions. The RealPresence Platform brings people face-to-face from anywhere and creates UC environments and collaboration experiences that incorporate HD video, voice, content and Web collaboration, as well as instant messaging, calendaring and e-mailing. The RealPresence Platform can be purchased in various combinations of hardware appliances, perpetual license software appliances (RealPresence Virtual Editions) and subscription-based software for virtual machines (Polycom RealPresence One solution).

The RealPresence Platform components include Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server; Polycom RealPresence Resource Manager and RealPresence Resource Manager, Virtual Edition; Polycom RealPresence Virtualization Manager; Polycom RealPresence Access Director and RealPresence Access Director, Virtual Edition; Polycom Video Content Management Solutions; Polycom ContentConnect; Polycom RealPresence One, and Polycom RealPresence Clariti. The Company's RealPresence Collaboration Server provides universal video collaboration or bridging. Universal video collaboration allows multipoint video, voice and content collaboration regardless of network, protocol, or device. The RealPresence Collaboration Server solutions can be sized to fit the needs of small, medium or large organizations, supporting the collaboration needs of customers.

The RealPresence Resource Manager system centrally provisions, monitors and manages the entire video collaboration network. Through dynamic provisioning, the RealPresence Resource Manager system automatically configures and maintains number of video clients at pre-determined software baselines. This eliminates having a range of software releases in the field, fixing end user configuration mismatches, uncertainty about the quality of video being provided and other typical system management issues. Built-in reports, application dashboards, warning thresholds and alarms, and drill-down tabs ensure that users can access troubleshooting and operational metrics that are readily available. The RealPresence DMA system is a network-based virtualization application for managing and distributing calls across collaboration networks. The RealPresence DMA solution provides a single unified dialing plan for video and voice applications across multiple vendors. Supporting over 25,000 concurrent calls and 75,000 devices, the RealPresence DMA system provides routing algorithms to maximize resource utilization and distribute calls based on priority, bandwidth and class of service.

The RealPresence Access Director solution enables users to video conference with anyone in the organization, whether they are in a secure environment at the office or an unsecure environment at home or in a hotel. Its video content management solutions provide secure video capture, management, administration and delivery through live streaming or sharing recorded media. Solutions include the RealPresence Media Suite and RealPresence Media Manager. Polycom ContentConnect Integrates with the RealPresence Platform (RealPresence DMA, RealPresence Collaboration Server, and RealPresence Access Director solutions) to enable HD video collaboration that includes content sharing between Skype for Business desktop, as well as standards-based video systems. Polycom RealPresence One is an offering, including all RealPresence Platform software and support services for voice, video and content collaboration, sold by subscription for virtual deployments. The RealPresence One solution also includes its software solutions for personal video collaboration, such as RealPresence Mobile and RealPresence Desktop software and the RealPresence Web Suite. The RealPresence Clariti is a collaboration infrastructure software for businesses of various sizes that connects people with HD voice, video, content and Web collaboration. RealPresence Clariti offers hybrid cloud burst service, to manage spikes in demand; providing additional capacity whenever needed. RealPresence Clariti creates and promotes collaboration and takes teamwork to a new level.

The Company competes with Cisco Systems, Inc., Avaya Inc., Blue Jeans Networks, Inc., ClearOne Communications, Inc., Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Logitech International S.A./LifeSize, PexIP AS, Snom Technology Ag, Vidyo, Inc., Yamaha Corporation/Revolabs, Inc., Yealink, Zoom Video Communications, Inc., Skype and ZTE Corporation.