Day 2/ Session

Overcoming the challenge of integrating voice and video in a UC environment

The Polycom-Microsoft partnership is making efforts in driving unified communications (UC) as a strategic tool said Glenn Noga, CIO and VP-IT, Polycom, Inc and Amit Mehta, director-Unified Communication, Microsoft

Glenn Noga, CIO, Polycom

Looking back at the emergence of UC, Noga pointed out that there have drivers such as globalization, cost reduction, productivity, consumer technologies and tech enablers such as networks, video/voice quality, and standards etc., all of which have propelled the emergence of UC.

“We ensured that our collaborating tools fit seamlessly with the UC landscape, tightly integrating communication applications,” said Noga.

The innovation as both Noga and Mehta observed is with regard to UC enhancing network capabilities and expansion of video from the conference room to the desktop to the mobile subscriber.

Speaking about the integration increased user base on UC, Microsoft’s Mehta pointed that the messaging infrastructure in the UC environment is growing rapidly and is almost 40% up on instant messenger.

Amit Mehta, Director-Unified Communication, Microsoft

Mehta pointed that there are already 150,000 users on UC working as an employee or vendor ecosystem.

On an average Mehta observed that 70 million IM sessions are going on in a month, 2 million calls in a month using UC. Microsoft has made $76 million investments towards this where it ensures the customers could see 30% RoI given a 40,000 user all over voice in a UC and collaborative environment.

Noga and Mehta have been making attempts to drive UC within the cloud as a future initiative. Some of the services that it can provide as Noga pointed would be director services, multipoint bridging, recording, IM and presence, network quality of service and bandwidth. “We have deployed IP voice, video and data collaboration to 2500 employees with products from over 20 vendors,” maintained Noga.

As far as the UC road map is concerned, Noga said that it is currently kept under framework for video, voice, data, presence, directories, security and technologies. Currently as Noga pointed the UC is used for changing business goals and observer the flow of communication for better business results and towards enhancing communication between partners and vendors.

The benefit of online and video-based sales training vs. traditional classroom session has seen a cost benefit of $1.2 million, besides the industry solutions marketing team’s annual savings from collaboration solutions driving $380,000 savings. For Polycom, the annualized hard travel costs were eliminated by conducting APAC quarterly review via video which saved $258,224.

— N Geetha