More than ever, travel costs, combined enhancements to video communications solutions are prompting businesses to look for innovative ways to collaborate with colleagues and customers.  There are already a host of video-based collaboration solutions available today, but many are high-end and include features many businesses don’t necessarily require.

 

Polycom (News - Alert) (News - Alert), which already boasts a wide range of video communications solutions, has now made it easier for to produce, manage, and stream video conferences and other multimedia content, both internally and to external audiences, with its new entry-level solution.

 

Polycom’s Video Media CenterT (VMT) 1000 video content management solutions, together with enhancements to its Polycom RSST 2000 video communications recording and streaming server, provides an easy way for businesses to develop and create high quality content and stream it — live or on-demand — to their employees and customers.

 

Supporting up to 250 concurrent streams, the VMC 1000 solution provides all the functionality required to create training sessions, educational programs, and other video content, including tools for tracking viewership data and statistics. To add further value to video presentations, it also enables synchronization of additional data to provide and even richer multimedia experience.

 

Designed to handle as many as 1,000 concurrent unicast users, as well as unlimited multicasting, the new system, despite being billed as “entry-level,” provides the scalability to meet the needs of global organizations.

 

Tightly integrated with the entire line of Polycom video-based products, the solution can be easily used with any of its video endpoints, as well as most third-party H.323 video endpoints. With this flexibility, users can easily and quickly stream live content, or use VMC 1000’s customizable Web portal to enable on-demand viewing.

 

When deployed with the Polycom RSS 2000, businesses can record both point-to-point and multipoint video conferences, which are the automatically stored, along with any collaborative content used during the call, enabling future on-demand streaming of the presentation or call.

 

Version 3.0 of the RSS 2000 video recording and streaming server includes multicasting support, which adds scalability and lessens strain on network resources during live streaming. It also includes clustering, which allows users to pool multiple RSS 2000’s using a common number to record on any of the systems, then retrieve the recorded content centrally through either the RSS 2000 or the VMC 1000.

 

In addition, the latest version includes support for SirenT22 high definition voice, complementing other HD video and content. Users are now able to stream not only high definition video content, but audio as well, providing an enhanced viewing and listening experience.

 

“Interest in video communication is growing rapidly, and organizations are struggling to cost-effectively deliver, manage, and produce video content,” said Joe Sigrist, senior vice president of video solutions at Polycom. 

 

By integrating video conferencing and content management platforms, Polycom enables its customers to leverage their entire video infrastructure to create an improved video communications network.

 

In addition to its new VMT 1000 and RSS 2000 solutions, Polycom has also expanded the applications available for its UltimateHD video conferencing solutions, announcing its Polycom HDX 7000T series. Specifically designed for small and mid-sized conference rooms, the HDX 7000T brings high definition video conferencing to new users. 

 

Combining HD voice, HD video, and multimedia content sharing features, the HDX 7000T allows a new range of smaller facilities to benefit from the total HD experience

offered by Polycom.

 

The HDX 7000T provides a flexible, yet cost effective way for businesses to introduce the very latest audio and video technology into their conference facilities without having to invest in a solution that exceeds their requirements. It includes not only HD audio and video, but also Polycom’s patent pending LPR (lost packet recovery) technology, producing a high quality experience even on lower quality networks, such as the public Internet.

 

With the latest enhancements to its already popular multimedia conferencing products and solutions, Polycom extends the availability of HD multimedia solutions to any business looking to enrich its collaboration and content sharing experience. 

 

Solutions such as these make it easy for organizations to participate in, share, and store video conferences, as well as associated content. By doing so, they can not only enjoy cost savings, but also increase productivity across their workforces.