Polycom Delivers Future of Immersive Telepresence Featuring True-to-Life Collaboration at Up To Half the Bandwidth

Polycom Open Telepresence Experience features highest quality of experience with lowest total cost of ownership

LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 07 Jun 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice communications solutions, today expanded the industry's broadest telepresence solution portfolio with the Polycom® Open Telepresence Experience (OTX™) 300. The immersive telepresence solution delivers true-to-life collaboration, including full 1080p video, at up to half the bandwidth of comparable systems and offers the lowest total cost of ownership, to drive a rapid return on investment for customers.

"Polycom telepresence helps customers address the increasingly critical challenge of collaborating across multiple locations," said Andrew Miller, president and CEO, Polycom. "Using telepresence, Polycom customers save millions of dollars a year by improving productivity and reducing the need to travel. In addition, we estimate a mid-sized enterprise will spend up to $2.1 million less in the first year of a typical Polycom telepresence deployment – including equipment, bandwidth, services and maintenance – versus a comparable deployment from Cisco."

Helping drive lower costs, Polycom OTX 300 supports high-definition (HD) video using up to 50 percent less bandwidth than competing solutions through Polycom's implementation of H.264 High Profile, a powerful new standards-based video compression technology. Available only from Polycom today, H.264 High Profile lowers the costs of network bandwidth required for telepresence, and can help organisations significantly expand their video deployment without having to invest in large-scale network upgrades. (See additional press release today about Polycom's expanded H.264 High Profile support)

"Polycom is helping to transform the way we operate, enabling our customers and employees to collaborate more effectively across distances and time zones," said Simon Hunt, global product director of video communications at Regus Plc, the world's largest provider of workplace solutions, operating over 1,000 business centres across 450 cities in 75 countries. "Polycom's positive impact on our business, its customer-focused approach and relentless innovation through developments like the Polycom OTX and H.264 High Profile, are just a few reasons why Polycom remains an important business partner for our organisation. As customers demand more solutions-orientated answers, Polycom has been invaluable in supporting our evolving need to deliver a robust global business-to-business offering."

The Polycom OTX Advantage
In addition to delivering the lowest total cost of ownership, the Polycom OTX 300 series immersive telepresence system provides unique benefits and capabilities, including:

• Most effective collaboration across distances.  People appear true to life, enabling more effective collaboration and accelerated decision-making across distances and reducing the need for travel. A uniquely designed environment enables an immersive experience, including the benefits of conversational stereo audio, full 1080p video and HD content sharing on monitors that automatically rise on demand – all protected with Lost Packet Recovery™ technology that provides a consistent, high-quality experience over real-world IP networks.
• Greatest room flexibility. Unique multi-functional design is optimised for exceptional, across-the-table multi-media experiences when meeting face-to-face or live over video. This helps maximise worker productivity, room utilisation and real estate investments by supporting a range of business applications beyond telepresence meetings (i.e. in-room presentations).
• Widest investment protection through standards-based interoperability. Polycom provides seamless connectivity with the estimated two-million standards-based telepresence and video conferencing endpoints in use today.
• Deepest native integration with leading Unified Communications platforms. As part of the Polycom Open Collaboration Network, Polycom telepresence offerings support integration with leading UC and networking platforms. At launch, Polycom OTX 300 will support native integration with Microsoft UC environments (Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 and Microsoft Exchange), including the Polycom Conferencing for Outlook solution that makes visual communications simple to schedule and use within the natural workflow of Microsoft Outlook.
• Broadest international design appeal and minimal room modification requirements. The Polycom OTX 300 features an elegant, modern design that provides a consistent room-to-room experience and natural collaboration that allows users to focus on interaction with others. Front and rear environmental walls, and an optimised lighting package, improve acoustic and visual quality and minimise costly room modification requirements. The future-focused architecture can be upgraded with new technology, enabling greater long-term value and investment protection.
• Global service, support and availability. Polycom immersive telepresence solutions are available globally through certified Polycom channel and service partners with complementary supporting implementation and managed telepresence services to maximise customer satisfaction and return on investment. The Polycom OTX 300 will begin shipping in Q3 2010.

"As use of visual communications continues to increase, customers are looking for solutions that natively integrate with their core network and communications environments so they can derive more return from their technology investments," said Yancey Smith, director of product management, Communications Server for Microsoft. "Today, Polycom's integration for Microsoft environments is a great example, providing broad interoperability with Microsoft Office Communicator desktop video clients and dramatically simplifying the use of video by automating the scheduling and joining of video calls through Microsoft Outlook and the sharing of content through Microsoft SharePoint."

The Polycom OTX 300 expands Polycom's industry-leading portfolio of immersive telepresence solutions, which include the Polycom RealPresence Experience (RPX) series, the most immersive telepresence offering available suited for boardroom applications to interactive classroom environments; the Polycom Architected Telepresence Experience (ATX) 300, a flexible solution customisable for specific applications and unique space requirements; and the Polycom Telepresence Experience (TPX), which provides an across-the-table collaborative meeting experience for geographically dispersed teams.

Polycom immersive telepresence solutions, including the Polycom OTX 300 is integrated with Polycom's comprehensive solution for visual communication, and complemented by Polycom's market-leading room and personal telepresence systems, video conferencing systems, desktop video collaboration solutions and conferencing infrastructure that delivers unmatched scalability, the highest availability, and complete auto-failover protection. In addition to real-time visual communication, the Polycom portfolio includes a scalable video content platform with video recording, streaming, content management and digital signage, to give customers unprecedented capabilities for video-enabling their organisations.

The Polycom OTX 300 will be demonstrated at the InfoComm 2010 Conference and Expo, June 9 -11 in Las Vegas (booth N1806).

About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Leading unified communications and networking providers have joined the Polycom Open Collaboration Network to provide open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their unified communications environment. The Polycom Open Collaboration Network enables Polycom to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.

© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contacts

• Angelika Kempf
  Polycom, Inc.
  Tel: +49 811 999 4218
  angelika.kempf@polycom.com