The report, titled “The Forrester Wave: Room-Based Videoconferencing, Q3 2012,” uses 39 criteria to evaluate the top vendors in the industry, looking at video collaboration solutions for every work environment – from mobile and desktops to room systems and immersive telepresence – along with the services that support them. Forrester found that Polycom has taken the top scores in ‘current offerings’ based on such factors as conferencing experience, quality of experience, management platform, recording and streaming, and security and compliance, all for which Polycom was also top-ranked. In the ‘strategy’ category, Forrester named Polycom a leader largely because of its product roadmap and particular strengths in “UC integration” and “interoperability”—a key focus of and competitive advantage for Polycom and its global ecosystem of over 7,000 partners. In addition, Polycom was top ranked in the “partners” category. (Download the full report here).
“As Forrester notes in its new ‘Wave’ report, Polycom is now top-ranked in ‘current offerings’ for video collaboration. Polycom today is delivering the most useful innovations, best user experiences, and broadest interoperability of any video collaboration company,” said Polycom CEO Andy Miller. “Importantly, Forrester also named Polycom the top-ranked company in ‘strategy’— which we see as validation from an important thought leader that Polycom is on the right track with our vision to make video collaboration ubiquitous through an innovative roadmap and by offering the industry’s best user experience. Polycom will also continue to offer the industry’s broadest multi-vendor integration and lowest TCO. For our more than 415,000 customers globally, Polycom is delivering innovations in video collaboration that are changing the way people work, collaborate, learn, govern, create and even help save lives.”
“Polycom has a diverse portfolio of endpoints including a range of options that run the gamut from mobile and room-based systems to immersive telepresence,” wrote Phillip Karcher, the author of the Forrester Research report. “Through technology partnerships, with Microsoft in particular, Polycom provides endpoints that work well in multi-vendor environments. Many of its endpoints also interoperate natively with nonstandard protocols and codecs.”
Video Collaboration Is Becoming More Ubiquitous, Forrester Finds
The Forrester Wave report also discusses the growing interest in “face to face” video collaboration, which is helping businesses increase productivity, improve employee engagement and trust, and lower costs.
“In a work culture dominated by virtual meetings, more firms are looking to videoconferencing to replicate the in-person experience that employees prefer – or at least make voice conversations more engaging by fostering the trust and improved communications that comes with being able to read the other person’s body language,” wrote Forrester in the report. “Mobile executives want video for better work-life balance, managers want it to see that their direct reports aren’t distracted, and multicultural organisations want it to foster the trust and improved communication that comes with being able to read the body language of remote team members.”
Also, according to Forrester’s report: “Videoconferencing innovation today is happening on smaller screens like PCs, smartphones, and tablets that workers use in their everyday jobs. In response to the growing interest, vendors not only have to show strategies that account for desktop and mobile applications – they also have to make their traditional dedicated room-based systems easier to deploy at scale.”
Polycom RealPresence Video Collaboration Solutions
Polycom RealPresence video collaboration solutions deliver secure, high-quality video to companies of all sizes, so that teams can meet face-to-face with colleagues, partners and customers anywhere people work?in the office, at home, on the go, or on the manufacturing floor, in a hospital or, at a movie set. Polycom offers the broadest range of video collaboration solutions in the industry including:
RealPresence Immersive video theaters that provide the experience of being in the same room with other participants?life-sized and eye-to-eye. Polycom provides the industry’s best immersive video experience, with cinema-like video quality, crystal-clear HD audio with tailored acoustics, and personal content monitors, creating a real-as-life remote group collaboration experience that makes the distance and technology invisible.
Room solutions that facilitate enterprise-grade video collaboration, regardless of room size or budget. Polycom® RealPresence® Room (HDX® Series) video solutions are secure, easy to operate, and consistently deliver a flawless visual communications experience. Polycom RealPresence Room solutions make it simple for people to meet face-to-face and share HD-quality content with peers, partners, and customers wherever they may be located.
Desktop systems that deliver HD video collaboration to the personal workspace, including to PCs and laptops.
Award-winning Real Presence Mobile, which extends video collaboration beyond the office to leading Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.
Innovative video and UC solutions such as Polycom® EagleEye Director, the most intelligent UC camera , which delivers breakthrough HD experiences by automatically zooming in on the active speaker in the room as they talk or walk; and Polycom® UC Board™, which transforms ordinary surfaces into virtual whiteboards.