Miller to Demo Polycom® RealPresence™ Mobile, the First Enterprise HD Video Software Solution for Tablets That Lets Users Enjoy HD Video Collaboration from Anywhere
SAN DIEGO, Calif., CTIA Enterprise & Applications™ 2011 - Oct 12, 2011 : Andy Miller, president and CEO of Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in standards-based unified communications (UC), is today delivering a keynote address entitled "The Visual Mobile Society" at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications™ 2011 conference in San Diego, Calif. With CTIA membership including wireless carriers and their suppliers, as well as providers and manufacturers of wireless data services and products, Miller's discussion of the rise of a global "visual mobile society" – and the expanding markets for software and service providers that it represents – will be of keen interest to the thousands of attendees who are expected to watch the keynote live today. Miller's keynote will be streamed online; for more information, please visit: http://www.polycom.com/company/events/ctia_2012_keynote.html.
Miller will describe five drivers of the "visual mobile society":
- Mobile device proliferation. Gartner forecasts that the tablet market, just launched last year, will grow five-fold in four years, from 64 million tablets purchased in 2011 to over 320 million units purchased in 2015, with cumulatively over 900 million tablets in use by the end of that year.1 According to Apple, 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPads™ today.2 Android tablets are gaining traction both with consumers and businesses as well.
- Network readiness. 3G networks have been deployed widely, and 3G technologies account for over 5 billion mobile connections today. And now 4G is being deployed, with hundreds of 4G networks in service and growing.3
- Cloud delivery. The cloud market is expected to grow from $41 billion today to $241 billion in 2020.4
- Social connectedness. The number of Facebook users has exploded to 800 million (about 12 percent of the global population).5 In businesses, a recent IDC report forecasts that the social platform market will grow four-fold in the next four years, from $667 million in 2011 to nearly $2.9 billion in 2015.6
- Generation raised on video. People watch 3 billion videos on YouTube every day.7 And by 2015, the number of people participating in video chats is forecast to grow 14 times to more than 140 million, who will make 11 billion video chat calls worldwide that year.8
"Polycom's vision is to make it possible for millions of people to use video collaboration as their preferred method of communicating – easily, reliably and securely – regardless of network, carrier, protocol, application, or device," said Miller. "This week we launched the first true enterprise HD video software solution for tablets, Polycom® RealPresence™ Mobile, a significant step toward achieving this vision. Extending enterprise video to the mobile workforce will unleash the powerful network effect of HD video collaboration, and help further fuel the visual mobile society."
Polycom RealPresence Mobile
During his keynote, two guests will join Miller on stage: Gary Hagen, principal architect at Amgen, one of the world's largest bio-tech companies and a Polycom customer; and Gary Testa, Polycom vice president, Global Cloud and Service Provider Solutions. Testa will join Miller onstage to demonstrate the new RealPresence Mobile application for the first time, in a live multi-party video call connecting colleagues in an enterprise conference room with three tablet users in different locations. (See related press release, "Polycom Goes Mobile with First Enterprise Software Solution for Apple, Motorola, and Samsung Tablets that Lets Users Enjoy HD Video Collaboration from Anywhere.")
Announced on October 11, Polycom RealPresence Mobile, powered by the Polycom® RealPresence™ Platform, extends Polycom's HD video collaboration technology beyond the office and conference room to deliver to tablets the same high-quality, secure, reliable video experience customers are accustomed to inside the office. The RealPresence Mobile software application features an intuitive interface, allows users to simultaneously view content in HD during the video session and delivers the industry's best video and audio experience over wireless networks. The solution is available now via a free download from the Apple App StoreSM (for Apple iPad 2 users) and Android Market™ (for Motorola XOOM™ and Samsung Galaxy Tab™ users).
The RealPresence Platform also delivers unprecedented scale – supporting up to 75,000 devices and 25,000 concurrent sessions – plus resiliency and universal bridging to support both on-premises and cloud-based delivery. Miller and Testa will explain the technical underpinnings for delivering true enterprise HD video collaboration to tablets, both today in its early stages, and in future – as cloud-delivered video services by the CTIA membership will need to scale to handle countless cloud-delivered video calls by millions of mobile users. Delivering Polycom video to mobile platforms is a key component of the company's recently announced software strategy to bring secure HD video collaboration to the broadest range of business, video, mobile, and social networking applications.
Open Standard, Interoperability, and the OVCC
Another key theme of Miller's keynote will be openness and interoperability. Fundamental to Polycom's recently announced software strategy is a commitment to open standards-based interoperability across all of the elements in a communications environment, including multiple solutions, vendors, networks, and connection protocols. "Only through open standards and native interoperability can all these disparate parts work together seamlessly," said Miller.
Miller plans to share details on the importance of the Open Visual Communications Consortium™ (OVCC™), the first industry organization to take on the task of establishing a visual communication consortium dedicated to simplifying video calls, and its role in driving interoperability and video collaboration. The OVCC, a group of global video exchange providers, network providers, and equipment manufacturers that have united to expand video communications and enable businesses anywhere to connect everywhere, was originally conceived in June by Polycom together with leading global service providers. On October 10 at the CTIA conference, the OVCC was formally launched as an independent entity, opening membership to visual communications industry stakeholders interested in accelerating the adoption of business-to-business video communication. (See related OVCC press release, "Communications Industry Leaders Officially Incorporate Consortium to Commercialize and Accelerate Video Call Market.")
1 Gartner, "iPad and Beyond: The Future of the Tablet Market," September 2, 2011, ID: G00217137
2 Apple Corporation, Oct 2111
3 Constellation Research, "4G Deployment Update From 4G Americas," October 3, 2011
4 Forrester Research, Inc, "Sizing the Cloud," April 21, 2011
5 Facebook, Oct 2011
6 Source: IDC, "Worldwide Collaborative Applications 2011-2015 Forecast," June 2011, Doc #228926
7 YouTube, Oct 2011
8 GigaOM Pro, &am