New alliance to push visual communications
update A number of service providers have formed an alliance to drive the adoption of visual communications through enabling interoperability and allowing video conferencing systems to connect beyond corporate firewalls.
In a statement Thursday, Polycom said it will be acquiring Hewlett-Packard's visual collaboration business, valued at approximately US$89 million, which include HP's Halo products and managed services business.
Both companies also signed a strategic agreement in which Polycom will provide software technology and unified communications (UC) systems, while HP will offer go-to-market strategies as well as resell Polycom's UC products.
The partnership will allow both companies to leverage HP's networking scale and global reach, as well as Polycom's experience in video conferencing to provide customers video and UC products, delivered through Polycom infrastructure and on HP networking and system, said the statement.
The Halo Collaboration Studio was launched by HP in late-2005 in a bid to grab market share in enterprise collaboration.
Announced Thursday, the Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC) counts among its founding members Airtel, AT&T, BCS Global, BT Conferencing, Cable&Wireless Worldwide, Global Crossing, Glowpoint, iFormata Communications, Masergy, Orange Business Services, PCCW Global, Telefonica, Telstra and Verizon. It is led by unified communications (UC) vendor Polycom.
In a phone interview with ZDNet Asia, Hansjoerg Wagner, Polycom's senior vice president of global field operations and president for the Asia-Pacific region, explained that the consortium was "not so much about technology" but to gather service providers to "bring video to everyone".
To do so, it aims to enable the 2 million video systems worldwide connect to each other with ease, said Wagner. Traditionally, it has been cumbersome for visual communication tools such as telepresence and video conferencing to connect despite open standards as extra effort is required of users, such as entering a 15-digit code, he explained.
Interoperability has been cited as one of the barriers to the widespread uptake of telepresence, as the market had been divided into open standards-based systems and Cisco's technology. However, Wagner noted that this challenge was resolved early last year when Cisco released the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP). Polycom has included TIP into its products, he added.
Price, on the other hand, continues to hinder telepresence adoption, he noted, pointing out that the technology is considered to be at the high-end of the visual communications market, he said. The total cost of ownership of a telepresence system includes not only the setting up of the multi-screen room but also the implementation, servicing and bandwidth required to transmit high-definition video.
With the formation of the OVCC, Wagner believes that "ultimately" the cost of interconnectivity and bandwidth will drop. He explained that as more systems are available on a bigger scale, the price will be pressured downward which translates to a reduction in the total cost of ownership.
According to Wagner, a challenge for the consortium now is to attract more service providers, especially national service providers such as Telekom Indonesia or TM from Malaysia. That said, he noted that the consortium currently has a good blend of players of all sizes: large service providers such as AT&T, BT Conferencing and Orange Business Services; regional players such as Airtel as well as small and niche players such as iFormata Communications. These members will in turn encourage more participants to join, he added.
Besides business-to-business visual communications connections, Wagner said the consortium can benefit other industries such as education and healthcare. Using Singapore--which he described as a regional education hub--as an example, he said that higher education institutions here can offer courses to other countries using video conferencing technology. In healthcare, telepresence can benefit patients in remote areas, he noted.
Asia-Pacific "hot" for Polycom
Wagner, who termed the Asia-Pacific as a "hot market" for telepresence, said the region contributed to 24 percent, or US$82 million, of Polycom's revenue in the first quarter of 2011.
Within the region, China is the key driver, contributing 11 percent of Polycom's total global revenue, he noted. The Chinese market typically accounts for 2 to 3 percent of technology companies' revenues, he added.
India, while not as strong as China, is another growth market in the region for Polycom, said Wagner. The subcontinent experienced triple digit growth in the past quarter, he said.