Polycom made several major announcements this week, one of which is new Polycom RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite, a cloud-based software suite that allows Polycom customers to add anyone on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and other business video applications to their video conferences from a browser. RealPresence CloudAXIS is software suite that runs on the Polycom RealPresence Platform in either private enterprise clouds or public clouds, and securely extends enterprise-grade video and content collaboration outside the firewall to other businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C) via a browser.

The RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite is ideal for Polycom dealers to expand from offering Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) to Video Collaboration-as-a-Service (VCaaS) — adding applications such as recording and streaming, web conferencing, and collaboration tools (e.g., digital whiteboards). RealPresence CloudAXIS also offers additional value for large enterprises with the RealPresence Platform, enabling customers to create private enterprise clouds to extend video collaboration to other businesses and consumers for B2B and B2C connectivity.

Polycom says that RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite eliminates the security risks and administrative headaches posed by third-party video clients and solutions introduced onto corporate networks by employees who communicate over unsecure connections. RealPresence CloudAXIS also enables enterprises to leverage their investment in existing standards-based Polycom video collaboration systems — including room/group, desktop or mobile video solutions — and the RealPresence Platform.

RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite fast-tracks dealers that want to get to market quickly with new subscription-based revenue streams via both B2C and B2B VCaaS offerings. VCaaS enables dealers to offer value-added applications on top of cloud-delivered video conferencing, including recording and streaming and web conferencing, plus collaboration tools such as digital whiteboards and collaboration apps for vertical markets like healthcare or education. This offers opportunities to dealers to drive more monthly/annual service subscription sales, which are a key profit center for AV dealers.

Dealers can even co-brand the experience, including the user interface, and by leveraging Polycom’s recently announced suite of open APIs for the RealPresence Platform, they can integrate the RealPresence CloudAXIS suite with operations and billing support systems (OSS/BSS), as well as create unique value-added enterprise or consumer applications.

The RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite consists of a global directory presence engine, web client (supports HTML5-compatible browsers) and what Polycom is calling a “flexible resource broker” that dynamically allocates and brokers crucial variables such as bandwidth, databases, sessions and media to ensure an optimal user experience.

Polycom plans to make trials of the RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite available to service providers in Q1 of 2013.

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