Microsoft Ignite 2015: Polycom to Demonstrate Benefits of ‘Addition by Subtraction’

[Shannon Graham (Shannon_Graham)]

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator

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Sometimes subtraction is the best way to make an addition. And perhaps no one knows that better than Polycom.  To that end, Polycom has perfected the user experience by eliminating the need for meeting participants to focus on the technology. By removing these distractions and integrating collaboration tools to where they fit easily into user workflows, Polycom is adding to the user experience allowing people to focus on the meeting, not the technology.

Polycom and Microsoft share a common goal - to make collaboration simple. Collaboration shouldn’t be hard. It should be easy and intuitive. It should integrate easily into your workspaces and workflows and should enhance the meeting without the need for participants to have to intervene.

We hear three common challenges that meeting organizers and participants struggle with today.

1. Remote meeting participants cannot easily follow the conversation of participants in a meeting room.

Solution: The Polycom CX5100 and CX5500 ‘RoundTable’ Unified Conferencing Solutions provide a 360-degree view of the meeting room. Everyone is seen. Everyone is heard. Active speaker tracking automatically frames who is speaking.

1. Attempting to schedule a meeting with participants joining from different environments and systems from various manufacturers is time consuming and requires multiple steps.

Solution: Polycom RealConnect – solves for one of the biggest inhibitors of video adoption and that is lack of interoperability.  No longer do meeting organizers and participants have to give thought to who is joining from where and what system. The meeting is scheduled with one click in Outlook which auto-populates the invite with links to join the meeting. Users join the meeting as they would normally join any other meeting no matter what system their own while their familiar meeting flow and user experience is preserved.

1. Meeting room cameras have to be repositioned with confusing remote controls to capture all meeting participants in the frame.

Solution: Polycom EagleEye Producer delivers a breakthrough, 'directed', telepresence experience eliminating the need for users to ever have to find participants, pan, zoom, tilt. It’s done automatically with a clean, ‘produced’ look and feel for participants.

The common theme in the examples above? In each, human intervention is required. Each example requires human involvement for resolution, consumes time, distracts from the purpose of the meeting and results in lost productivity trying to make the technology work for the user. Each solution mentioned above was developed with a purpose in mind. It’s not just about building the technology in a vacuum that Polycom thinks you need. It’s about recognizing common obstacles and building technologies that meet them head-on.

And these are just a few of the solutions Polycom will be demonstrating at Microsoft Ignite, May 4-8 in Chicago. Attendees will get a hands-on demonstration of the Polycom CX8000, a dedicated room collaboration solution that extends Skype for Business into the conference rooms and delivers exceptional visual collaboration capabilities.

Microsoft recently announced that VVX business media phones will be the first phones to support the forthcoming cloud voice service offering as part of Microsoft Office 365. Discover the newest features and functionality on this popular handset series.

As part of an expanded relationship, Microsoft and Polycom also recently announced plans to deliver a new series of video collaboration solutions purpose-built for Skype for Business called Polycom® RoundTable®. The first device in this new offering is the Polycom® RoundTable® 100, an affordable and easy-to-use video solution for huddle rooms that will allow small to midsized businesses (SMB) and teams with Skype for Business and Microsoft Lync 2013 to enjoy rich collaboration experiences, including voice, video and content collaboration, simply by logging into their Skype for Business account. The RoundTable 100 will take just minutes to set up and start using, and it will not require corporate domains or on-premises infrastructure, making it easy to use without assistance from IT.

See how this technology could help your organization.  Visit Polycom (booth #402) at Microsoft Ignite, May 4-8 in Chicago where Polycom is proud to be a Gold Sponsor.  Schedule a meeting while you’re there with our Microsoft Alliance Team, one or our Skype for Business Most Valuable Players (MVP) or product managers.

For a list of our speakership sessions at Ignite, click here. 

If you’re not attending Ignite, let us know how we can enhance your communications and make your users more productive. Email us today at teammicrosoft@polycom.com.