The Polycom Technology Partner ecosystem continues to expand, helping Polycom to extend its solutions, and allowing these solutions to become further differentiated and more attuned to particular vertical markets. This growth is also extending in another way – as the Polycom Partner ecosystem begins to mesh with the Microsoft partner ecosystem. Polycom’s partnership with Microsoft continues to make an increasing impact in the market, through an expansion of integrated products, an increase in joint solution bundles and a sharp increase in the revenue directly attributable to this partnership.
And, this impact (and growing joint install base) has not gone unnoticed by the Microsoft Partner community, who would like to, not just extend the value of Microsoft solutions in the market, but jointly extend the value of Microsoft and Polycom solutions, for those organizations that leverage both Microsoft and Polycom to support their voice, video and content requirements. These integrated 3rd party technologies further automate and/or extend innovation around a Polycom/Microsoft deployment.
These partners generally fit within one of the following technology categories: Gateways, Provisioning, Session Border Control (SBC), Contact Centers, Headsets, Networking and E911. Two long time Microsoft partners, who recently joined Polycom’s Technology Partner program, are Event Zero and RedSky Communications.
Event Zero provides Lync and Polycom business phone provisioning and management. The Event Zero product – UC Commander, automates provisioning for Polycom, in Skype for Business (Lync) or OpenSIP environments, and UC Commander provides a single interface for deploying, managing, and maintaining inventory for global endpoints.
Additionally, UC Commander provides comprehensive management of the endpoints; from log files and inventory to rebooting and direct console access—everything needed to manage an organization-wide deployment in one easy-to-use tool. Other key features include:
- Dashboards – ID and locate Polycom devices – by sites, groups, models and endpoints
- Dynamic Configurations – create global configurations, or build on it by group, model, type, site, or a specific endpoint
- Endpoint Management – access log files (without logging into phones), quickly reboot a single phone or groups of phones
- Reporting - combines powerful analytics for Microsoft Skype for Business (SfB) usage (call details records and quality
Another Polycom Technology Partner whose products support both Microsoft and Polycom deployments is RedSky Communications. RedSky provides enhanced 9-1-1 (E911) services, which routes an emergency call to the appropriate 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for the caller's location, and automatically displays the caller's phone number, address and location within the address.
RedSky provides both a cloud based service and on premise solution that supports Polycom and Lync deployments allowing Standard Polycom IP phones and Lync devices to become location aware, and be updated in real time. And, RedSky’s service supports mobile users, who may be reconnecting to their network from various locations.
Today, Polycom is the only Microsoft UC partner that provides direct integration with more than 40 voice, video, and content solutions that integrate with Skype for Business / Microsoft Lync, SharePoint, Exchange and Office 365. The Polycom Microsoft partnership will continue to evolve, but will also be supported by an ecosystem of partnerships that drive differentiation in the market, and valuable innovation for customers.
