Polycom Adds Rich Media Conferencing to IBM Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes

The Polycom Unified Collaboration for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes is the first to enable enterprise users to launch high quality point-to-point and multi-point voice, video or combined voice and video conferences directly from Lotus Sametime and IBM Lotus Notes. The solution gives workers one-click access to on-demand voice and video collaboration tools that can help enhance teamwork and help accelerate enterprise decision making among geographically dispersed workers, customers, partners and suppliers.

"Organizations around the globe are adopting Lotus Sametime as the unified communications and collaboration platform for their high-performance workplace," said Bruce Morse, vice president of unified communication and collaboration, IBM. "Teaming with Polycom, IBM customers can extend the value of their unified communications and collaboration environments by adding high-quality, rich-media collaboration capabilities that can further improve productivity and efficiency."

"People are most effective when the communication and collaboration tools they need are instantly available as part of the everyday workflow," said Joe Sigrist, senior vice president and general manager of video solutions at Polycom. "Polycom's integration with the IBM UC2 environment puts our industry-leading voice, video and unified collaboration capabilities just one-click away within the applications that millions of people use everyday to communicate with others."

Polycom and IBM Global Technology Services have also entered into an agreement which aims to enhance IBM's ability to deliver scalable, security-enriched and highly-available unified communications solutions to enterprise clients around the globe. In conjunction with IBM's converged communication services portfolio, IBM Global Technology Services will resell and integrate Polycom's portfolio of voice, video and content sharing endpoints, bridges, media servers and management services. This agreement will enable IBM to seamlessly integrate IBM Sametime solutions and Polycom products into a client's current environment.

Polycom Unified Collaboration for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes provides flexible options for adding voice, video or unified collaboration from within Lotus software applications. Lotus Notes users who also license Lotus Sametime can launch a voice or video conference call from their contact list or escalate an instant message (IM) chat session to a voice or video call using the familiar Click-to-Call or Click-to-Conference features. Lotus Notes users can launch a voice or video call using Click-to-Call or Click-to-Conference wherever contacts appear within Lotus Notes (contact list, email, address book) or schedule a voice or video conference as part of a future meeting. Within Lotus Sametime Web conferencing, users can launch Instant Meetings with voice and video conferences, or include a voice or video conference as part of scheduled web conference.

Users also have flexibility for how they join a call. Lotus Sametime users can associate different devices with their Lotus Sametime profile (desktop phone, mobile phone, desktop video application, video conferencing system, etc.) and then simply choose which device they want use when joining a meeting. People using different types of devices are joined seamlessly in a meeting through the unified conferencing capabilities of the Polycom infrastructure. For example, a user may receive an IM prompt inviting them to join a video call with a co-worker. That user can choose to join the call using their desktop video application, or send the call to a video system in a nearby conference room, or join the call using their desktop, mobile or conference phone. This can also be used as a "find me" feature allowing users to direct incoming calls to a mobile phone when traveling or to an alternate phone or video endpoint when working from home or a remote office.

Once a conference is started, the initiator can easily control the conference settings (end call, mute self, mute all, etc.) from the familiar Sametime interface, and access a dial-in number for other participants who may be outside the company or not online at the time.

The Polycom integrated solution provides organizations with a single infrastructure for unified communications and collaboration with rich-media conferencing. The solution includes a new Polycom RAS 200I application server that features API integration with the IBM Lotus Sametime Server and IBM Lotus Domino Server, and provides seamless call routing between the Lotus applications and Polycom desktop and conference room video systems for point-to-point video calls, or the Polycom RMX 2000 conferencing-optimized media server or MGC unified conferencing bridge for multi-point voice, video or unified conferences. The solution is available in configurations for video conferencing, voice conferencing, or unified video and voice conferencing that can join people on phones and video conferencing systems in the same meeting.

The Polycom solution is optimized for Polycom desktop and conference room video systems, but will support any standards-based video conferencing system (including HD systems) through the RMX 2000 conferencing optimized media server or MGC bridge. All types of desktop, conference and mobile phones are supported.

Source: www.polycom.com