- Juniper Networks and Polycom announced an alliance focused on improving the reliability, cost-effectiveness and quality of the customer experience for telepresence and video conferencing services. Anchored by dynamic signaling between the Juniper network resource control platform and the Polycom video call control system, the joint managed video services solution will reduce total capital expense and ongoing operating and maintenance costs and requirements, while improving the delivery and manageability of visual communications.
- Scheduled for release in mid 2010, the alliance will deliver an intelligent service provider solution that enables assured-quality managed video services over a converged network. As the industry's first "conferencing-aware" network solution, it will help drive costs out of the delivery of high-value telepresence and comprehensive video conferencing managed services by allowing service providers to maximize the capabilities of their existing network. Implementing a single-network solution is a significantly more scalable and profitable model for service providers compared to the current overlay network model for supporting telepresence and video conferencing services.
- In addition to the benefits for service providers, enterprise customers will also have more control over how services are delivered, while increasing the business value of those services by enabling telepresence and video conferencing traffic to run over the same networking equipment as other applications with assured quality. By providing enterprise customers with highly reliable and cost-effective managed service options to support enterprise-wide telepresence and HD video conferencing deployments (telepresence, room and desktop), the solution can drive collaboration, increase productivity, and reduce costs. This is because the managed service model can deliver a faster return on investment for customers through lower upfront costs and predictable on-going operational costs for video services, while it also provides capabilities for secure business-to-business collaboration.
- "The exploding interest in visual communication has created an urgent need for a more reliable and cost-effective model for delivering assured quality video services," said Gerri Elliott, executive vice president for strategic alliances, Juniper Networks. "Leveraging Junos Space, an open platform for ecosystem partners, Juniper and Polycom are creating a unique solution that will enable carriers to maximize the value of their existing networks to deliver scalable, high quality video services. This will help carriers to move away from siloed networks toward more intelligent and efficient converged networks that are more sustainable and profitable in the long-term."
- "Visual communication is becoming an increasingly strategic tool in today's dynamic, global business environment as organizations across industries are adopting it to work more effectively across distances and reduce costs," said Bob Hagerty, CEO, Polycom. "Teaming with Juniper, our goal is to help improve the quality and efficiency of visual communications on the network, so customers have deployment options and can confidently incorporate the technology into their core business processes and as a key component of their unified communications initiatives. This partnership supports the Polycom Open Collaboration Network initiative, enabling more efficient and cost-effective delivery of Polycom's open, standards-based solutions within a service model."
- "Juniper and Polycom are leveraging their respective strengths in carrier-class network architectures and enterprise telepresence and video conferencing to change how video traffic runs on the network among other applications," said Ira Weinstein, senior analyst and partner, Wainhouse Research. "Traditionally, video conferencing environments have had no insight into the real-time status of the network. With this solution, the video communication platform dynamically interacts with the network, enabling assured quality for video and other network-centric applications. The result is a more efficient and effective use of network and video resources."
- The solution will combine high-performance network infrastructure systems from Juniper with industry-leading telepresence and video conferencing systems from Polycom. Specifically, it includes the Junos Space network application platform and its subscriber suite that includes policy and identity services, the MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers, and SRX Series Services Gateways with integrated routing and security for streamlined enterprise connectivity. Key Polycom components include Polycom telepresence systems and visual communication infrastructure products, including the Polycom Distributed Media Application (DMA) that centralizes call control and provides further failover redundancy.
