Spotlight on UK – Jeremy Keefe, UK&I and Benelux Area Sales Vice President

[Sonal Bisht (Sonal Bisht)]

How has the year 2016 been so far?

This year we are continuing to see the incredible success of our solutions being endorsed by third parties and since there are more than a few to name, I must admit that we have been extremely busy over the past couple of months.

In the UK, Polycom® VVX® 410 Business Media Phone bagged the ITSPA Award 2016 in the Best VoIP CPE category. And, the whole range of Polycom® VVX® Business Media Phones was endorsed as the Channel Product of the Year – Hardware, in Comms Business Awards 2016.

Polycom® RealPresence Trio™ and Polycom® RealPresence Centro™ are finalists in Comms Business Awards 2016 and AV Awards 2016.

How would this success transform into customer benefit?

The customer is no longer looking only to purchase a solution – they are looking for an investment into their future and ways to improve their business productivity. This is where Polycom can help by developing solutions that are not only easy-to-use but can also integrate with the existing UC systems as well as Microsoft Skype for Business environments.

 At Polycom, we have started thinking about the next steps in the light of rising real estate costs and credit crunch, the combined blow of which is making many businesses think about what else they could improve to achieve a profitable growth. The customer can steer themselves onto the desired path by firstly encouraging modern ways of working as applicable for their business, such as remote or anywhere working – an approach that will can help control the costs incurred by both parties as well as provide the essential work-life balance to those in need. With the rise of mobile and remote workforce, in this instance, comes the challenge of finding the right technology and we urge everyone not to forget the smaller nooks and corners when reviewing that requirement. According to Wainhouse Research, there are an estimated 50 million smaller meeting rooms or huddle rooms globally, showing that virtually all enterprises can capitalise on the potential of these small spaces. These huddle rooms could be equipped with audio and video collaboration solutions such as Polycom® RealPresence Trio™ and Polycom® RealPresence Centro™ that are specially designed for huddle spaces so the office staff, including mobile workers, can simply walk into one of these smaller rooms for a meeting when they require to do so. A recent article in The Sunday Times advocates the changes that are taking place at the customer front in line with our vision of the workplace of the future.

Customers are also feeling the pinch of the rising cost of maintaining the traditional PBXs for their telephony requirements. One of the main reasons why Polycom® VVX® Business Media Phones saw a huge success is that it can assist those migrating from analogue to IP with only a little investment. We work with a plethora of ITSPs, including BroadSoft, 8x8, RingCentral, GENBAND and Fuse. In addition, our solutions natively integrate with Microsoft Skype for Business and Cloud PBX. For the large enterprises, this migration initiative becomes a major project mainly due to the size of the company and requires considerable amount of time and resources. Our recommendation for the small- or medium-sized businesses, however, is that it is in their best interest to adopt the OpEx model offered by hosted telephony sooner rather than later.  

What role does the channel have to play in this revolution?

The channel we work with consists of both traditional Audio Visual partners as well as the larger Service Providers. Both are witnessing a sharp rise in the demand for technology that can natively integrate with Skype for Business environments. This movement is driving the way businesses are looking to review their collaboration technology requirements.

The larger Service Providers are already well equipped to stride the waves of this movement and we are making sure that we help our traditional Audio Visual partners by providing appropriate training and education. This is an extremely important aspect of our regional channel development plan.