Polycom is stepping up its game with some big new augmentations for current systems, and a bit of new material rolling out to boot. Not only is the company bringing out updates to the RealPresence Resource Manager, as well as the RealPresence Distributed Media Application (DMA) v6.0, but is also noting the new RealPresence Video DualManager 400 appliance.

Perhaps the biggest updates come from the RealPresence Resource Manager. Now at version 8.0, the software can support up to 50,000 devices at once, which is a big boost from the previous version that could only offer capacity to 10,000 devices at the same time. This is a big boost to large enterprise users who needed a way to get a large number of users onto a video system at the same time, a tool that's particularly useful in a large environment with a lot of users operating under a bring your own device (BYOD) paradigm, or for mobile workers. The new RealPresence Resource Manager supports smartphones, tablets, desktop systems, and even video collaboration systems, and offers up support for provisioning, reporting and monitoring. With its own API suite, there's even room for further customization as need be.

Meanwhile, the updates to RealPresence DMA v6.0 allow for some significant enhancements to video operator services. There's on-demand support, complete with dialing, interactive voice response systems, multiple language supports for those who lead a more polyglot organization, and even a set of customization points to make it truly the user’s own.

While these updates were useful and undoubtedly welcome, there were also reports of the new Video DualManager 400 appliance, which can be brought into play with nothing more than a Dell (News - Alert) PowerEdge R620 server. The DualManager 400 includes both RealPresence Resource Manager and RealPresence DMA, putting both of these valuable tools together for use in one place. All the benefits of both RealPresence tools become available, as well as the ability for employees to better control when and how meetings take place, opening up more options and giving employees more opportunity to both collaborate and keep up with current workloads. All three items should be available this August, so it shouldn't be much of a wait at all.

These advancements are actually well in keeping with the wider video market, which has been offering staggering growth of late. Not only in entertainment, but also in collaboration, video is progressively proving to be a larger part of the enterprise market than many likely saw coming. Collaboration tools are an especially big part of this market, getting help at the browser level from developments like Web-based real time communication (WebRTC) and several others—not to mention tools that have already been in play like Skype (News - Alert)—making RealPresence's expansion strategy a sane response to a market that demands progressively more video-based communications.

It's hard to understate the value of collaboration. Getting multiple people to work on the same task can often result in new and innovative solutions thanks to the power of multiple perspectives, skills and experiences working in tandem to one common goal. Facilitating that collaboration in turn can yield some very impressive bottom line results, so having a system in place like the various RealPresence tools can be a big step toward making that potential into reality. It's not always the case, of course, but RealPresence tools offer a lot of potential for the large business to take the power of its enormous array of perspectives and convert same into cost savings and new innovation.