Skype for Business is Now Available. What will Microsoft and Polycom deliver next?

[Steven Erickson (Steven_Erickson)]

Four months into 2015 and this year has not been short of exciting firsts within our industry. I mentioned in January that 2015 promised to be an exciting year and that our partnership with Microsoft will afford us opportunities to deliver new solutions in our pursuit to unleash the power of human collaboration. We share a common goal to make collaboration solutions easy for everyone to use. Skype for Business will give Polycom and Microsoft another platform to innovate further.

With Skype for Business now generally available, a greater number of businesses and end users will have the power to drive more effective collaboration through video. It will be even easier to connect with customers, partners and colleagues. Skype for Business takes the power of Lync and opens collaboration to the world by allowing users the ability to access the entire Skype database. End users have access to hundreds of millions of users, giving us a new way to connect with everyone. The vastness of the Skype database will foster greater collaboration for businesses around the globe.

We Never Stop Innovating

With Microsoft, we never stop innovating.  It's equal parts passion and dedication from both sides to drive new collaborative experiences to the masses.

You may recall in late 2013, Polycom worked in tandem on a survey with Redshift Research to better understand how pervasive video could be.  Amazingly, it was predicted that by 2016, video would surpass email as the most preferred means to collaborate. That only works if we bring video to everyone. The solutions also have to be intuitive, and integrate into the ways people work, not the other way around.

Microsoft recognized a market need to design technologies that would drive greater awareness and, ultimately, bring video to a wider market.   Microsoft hand-selected Polycom to build innovative solutions that would foster more collaboration. The first of those solutions was unveiled at Enterprise Connect in March when we introduced the first in a series of purpose-built room systems for Skype for Business – the Polycom RoundTable category.  RoundTable 100 was the first to be unveiled and will drive more video, voice and content experiences to everyone.  We also announced that several of our current solutions built for Lync will also be part of the RoundTable series. These include the CX5100 and CX5500.

Microsoft Ignite (May 4-8, Chicago, Illinois), a conference designed to bring many stand-alone Microsoft events under one roof, will mark more than a decade of collaboration and partnership between Polycom and Microsoft. 

The remaining eight months of 2015 promises to be even more game-changing for the industry with new tools that will work with Skype for Business and Office 365. So stay tuned. We’re just getting rolling!

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Additional Resources:

• Request a demo
• Read more about Polycom RoundTable 100 and Skype for Business