Poly

 

PLEASANTON, Calif. - Oct 17, 2011 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in standards-based unified communications (UC), today announced the acquisition of ViVu, Inc., a privately- held video collaboration software company. ViVu has developed innovative video collaboration software that can be easily embedded into web applications such as enterprise, social, and vertical industry applications to enable instant web-based HD video collaboration. ViVu gives Polycom a fast-track to embed HD video into web-based applications through an OEM model, accelerating time-to-market and adoption of Polycom HD video collaboration solutions, and driving awareness of the Polycom brand powering video collaboration inside a wide range of applications.

 

Polycom's vision is to make it possible for millions of people to use video collaboration as their preferred method of communication – easily, reliably, and securely – regardless of network, carrier, protocol, application, or device. The acquisition reinforces Polycom's software strategy (announced Sept. 14th), and is expected to be a key enabler for Polycom to continue to provide customers with the highest quality and scalable video collaboration solutions across the broadest range of business, video, mobile, and social networking applications. Polycom will leverage ViVu technology in the Polycom® RealPresence™ Platform – the most comprehensive software infrastructure for universal video collaboration.

 

"ViVu is a compelling acquisition for Polycom as their technology provides a scalable architecture to quickly deploy rich video collaboration for a range of web-based applications for social, business, and industry-specific applications, such as those for healthcare, finance, and customer service," said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, executive vice president and general manager of UC solutions and chief development officer, Polycom.

 

"ViVu is excited to join Polycom as we both believe in the power of video collaboration to increase productivity and improve communications and collaboration," said Sudha Valluru, founder and CEO, ViVu. "I'm confident that ViVu's video collaboration technology will thrive and grow in the future, as a result of Polycom's leadership in UC and video collaboration, power of distribution channels, and the breadth of its customer reach within the enterprise market and beyond."

 

The ViVu software enables instant video collaboration in any web-based enterprise application, and is device independent. Example applications include: customer service – faster helpdesk resolution; healthcare – doctor and patient conversations via video; and finance – improved trader to client collaboration. Polycom also plans to leverage ViVu technology to accelerate embedding video collaboration into social business applications.

 

Founded in 2008, ViVu's corporate headquarters is based in Cupertino, Calif. ViVu video collaboration software technology is already embedded into a number of enterprise applications. A couple of examples include:

The acquisition of ViVu gives Polycom innovative and scalable software technology for web-based applications – as well as first-mover advantage – to deliver HD video collaboration for social media and vertical market applications.

 

This transaction was signed and closed on October 14, 2011, for undisclosed cash consideration, and Polycom expects the transaction to be neutral to earnings.