Recently, Polycom (News - Alert) revealed its strategy to allow service providers to offer cloud-delivered, video-as-a-service (VaaS) solutions to customers. As part of the announcement, the company also introduced its Polycom RealPresence Cloud, a wholesale, carrier-ready telecom platform deployment offering that will assist telecommunication providers in quickly bringing these VaaS offerings to market.

According to a press release, the RealPresence Cloud is based on a carrier-grade infrastructure, and has endpoints and services that will enable businesses of all sizes to better leverage subscription-based solutions for video collaboration.

In most situations, businesses large and small need a hybrid solution of both premises-based video collaboration solutions and video on demand, or a pure VaaS solution. With this new telecom platform deployment solution, however, service providers can drive the penetration and adoption of Polycom video collaboration solutions among SMBs and enterprises.

Calling Polycom RealPresence Cloud “a key component to make the company’s vision of making video collaboration ubiquitous,” Andy Miller, president and CEO at Polycom, said that providers are critical partners to drive video collaboration growth via VaaS offerings, which will dramatically lower the up-front investment for SMBs and enterprises to enable them to reap the benefits of video collaboration.

Additionally, the Polycom RealPresence Cloud enhances the scalability and security required for providers to offer VaaS to SMBs and enterprises.

Moreover, the RealPresence Cloud comes with a fully managed multipoint video service that supports a multitude of connectivity options between standards-based room, mobile, PC, and Web-based endpoints, as well as Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync 2010, IBM Sametime and endpoints supporting the non-standard TIP protocol.

The company has revealed that China Unicom has created one of the largest video clouds in the world, powered by the RealPresence Platform, which enables the delivery of VaaS to more than 10,000 business and government organizations throughout China.  And India-based service provider Airtel (News - Alert) is also using the RealPresence Platform to deliver VaaS solutions to SMBs and enterprises throughout India.

Polycom aims to make it possible for everyone to use face-to-face video collaboration as the preferred method of communicating, regardless of network, carrier, protocol, application or device.

The company’s mobility solution, Polycom RealPresence Mobile, is a free-to-download software solution that extends the enterprise-grade video collaboration capabilities of the Polycom RealPresence Platform beyond the conference room, office, and firewall to mobile tablets, enabling video usage anywhere.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO registration click here.

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