Special Guest Blog by Glynn Jones, VP EMEA Channels and Advanced Technology Group

The recent announcement of the Polycom VVX101 and VVX201 entry level phones now complete the VVX Business Media Phone portfolio. With a full range of entry to executive level phones, the VVX portfolio delivers value to cloud / hosted voice service providers and enterprise customers alike. Supporting integration to both open SIP voice platforms such as Broadsoft, Genband, Metaswitch, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence and Alcatel-Lucent Rapport for Enterprises along with Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business markets, Polycom offers increased value to the business voice market.

The VVX range has been extensively tested by Microsoft and certified for Lync/Skype for Business, which means the VVX Business Media Phones can be deployed with confidence into Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business environments. Please note, the VVX 101 Business Media Phone does not support Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business.

If we take a closer look into the hosted voice market, we can see it is growing at an incredible rate. Transparency Market Research (TMR) forecast that the global Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services market will expand at a 9.7% CAGR during the forecast period of 2014 to 2020, and is projected to be worth US$136.76 billion by 2020.

The majority of issues such as security and reliability, which once hampered cloud adoption, have been or are being addressed and service providers of all types have broadened their VOIP application capabilities and expanded their overall portfolios. As a result, the subscriber base of the global VoIP services market is expected to reach 348.5 million by 2020¹.

In EMEA, we are seeing an increase in hosted / cloud based voice service providers (SPs) with a number of new entrants. Polycom is well positioned to support the hosted voice SP customers with the complete Polycom VVX Business Media Phone portfolio, allowing hosted voice providers to offer:

• Lower cost per seat/cost per user allowing for service differentiation (competitively priced bundled services)
• Better margins for hosted services – quicker return on investment to return on asset
• Extremely reliable handsets with greater customer satisfaction
• Minimal customer complaints to the SP’s call centre – industry leading reliability
• Close relationship with Tier 1 hosted platforms, resulting in reduced lab testing and ensuring a faster time to market with new services.

This will drive competition among the hosted voice providers to create new innovative VOIP services, which, inevitably, can only benefit customers.

Reference:

• http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/voip-services-market.htm