Cisco’s takeover of Tandberg left Polycom with two choices: succumb to takeover or takeover the unified communications’ industry – more specifically Cisco’s long-held grip on the market share. Polycom chose the latter, structuring an aggressive campaign to gain market share over Cisco while bringing to fruition the company’s UC Everywhere vision. Today Polycom has an estimated 40% share of the video conferencing market, backed by industry consensus that Polycom is winning the market share over Cisco.

The start of the Polycom revolution

Polycom enlisted a visionary leader to head up the company’s aggressive new strategy, the company’s own EVP of Global Field Operations, Andrew Miller. With experience as a former executive with both Cisco and Tandberg and an impressive 28-year career in technology and sales, Miller was tailor-made to spearhead Polycom’s aggressive strategy as CEO.

With a know-thy-enemy tactical recruiting strategy, Miller made quick work of pulling together a formidable executive management team, appointing former Cisco powerhouse, Joseph Burton, as Polycom’s senior vice president, chief strategist and CTO, along with other notable hires from Tandberg, Motorola, Oracle and Xerox. The company recently announced new additions to its executive line up to help push Polycom’s global growth initiative.

Under new leadership, Polycom has relentlessly pursued its tried-and-true partnership model in a two-fold effort to both bolster its competitive positioning against Cisco, and to build its product portfolio through a mix of acquisition and organic growth.

Polycom staying true to interoperability, product development, cloud and mobile promises

Polycom’s reliance on partnerships – including Microsoft, BroadSoft, Avaya, Siemens, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Riverbed Technology – can be a tenuous strategy to manage. One on side, partnerships with top-tier vendors is a way to fast track enterprise sales, but partners can and do opt to make similar products that compete with partner products. Something Microsoft, Polycom’s closet partner, has been guilty of in the past.

Though Polycom’s partnership program has significantly contributed to the company’s success, particularly in its competitive campaign against Cisco, Polycom isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket. The company has a renewed focused on product development.

In April alone, the company announced three new telepresence solutions, including its EagleEye Director, HDX 4500 desktop telepresence solution, and Telepresence m100.  Polycom also acquired Accordent Technologies in March.

Polycom’s EagleEye Director uses voice triangulation, face-finding technology, and a dual-camera tracking system to deliver a personalized one-to-many telepresence experience in any conference room by ensuring the speaking party is always highlighted (zoomed in and centered).

The company also added the HDX 4500 desktop telepresence solution to its HDX portfolio. Billed as an all-in-one UC solution, the standards-based HDX 4500 brings HD video and audio conferencing to the executive desktop at up to 50 percent less bandwidth than similar solutions (read Cisco’s TelePresence).

On the mobile side, Polycom’s Telepresence m100 is a portable PC-based software application that allows users to share content in a video conference and connect to any standards-based telepresence solution and multiple device types including Android tablets.

Polycom’s standards-based solutions provide interoperability and native integration with existing platforms including Microsoft’s SharePoint and Lync, IBM’s Sametime, and applications from multiple vendors. Polycom solutions are also interoperable with some Cisco solutions via Cisco’s Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP). Polycom was among the first vendors to adopt TIP after the EU forced Cisco to use the protocol as a condition of the Tandberg deal.

Polycom’s recent acquisition of Accordent Technologies expands the company’s portfolio to include video content management and delivery technologies. With the Accordent platform, Polycom customers can access all major video use cases including live studio webcasts, automated rich media webcasting from meetings or classrooms, streaming extensions to video conferences, or user-generated content from the desktop.

In conjunction with Polycom’s acquisition of Accordent Technologies, the company also announced a new video asset management solution, Polycom Accordent Media Services, powered by Microsoft’s cloud services platform. With Polycom Accordent Media Services, companies can set up set up a searchable video content management system for their video assets. The secure, searchable video data base is stored in the cloud and can manage anything from major meeting videos to calls between desk phone users.

Polycom’s future in the Microsoft-Skype deal

Miller, not surprisingly, is optimistic about the Microsoft Skype deal. In a letter to customers, Miller wrote, “We believe that Polycom and Microsoft – incorporating Skype – will continue to be uniquely positioned to jointly deliver what our customers want: open standards-based communications systems that provide investment protection and interoperability in multi-platform UC environments.” He added that this merger will also further isolate Cisco as a closed “island” of technologies.

How Microsoft positions Skype within the Microsoft ecosystem will ultimately determine where Polycom lands after the dust settles. If Microsoft is able to transition Skype (via Lync integration) as an enterprise-quality solution, Polycom’s could have cause for concern. And as consumer-based collaborative solutions continue to flood the enterprise, interest in expensive room-based video conferencing systems or on-site solutions may wane. Regardless, according to Miller, the acquisition will help drive momentum in the video collaboration space, and more customers is a good thing for a well-positioned, agile company like Polycom. Companies like Avaya, Mitel and NEC are more likely to feel the sting of the deal.

To hear Polycom’s latest plans in its UC Everywhere initiative, tune into a live webcast and engage directly with Andy Miller and top cloud and mobility industry leaders on June 1st from 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. PDT. Innovation Driving UC Everywhere: From Mobile to the Cloud and Beyond is a live, interactive webcast covering new UC announcements and the company’s plan for taking its UC Everywhere strategy across the cloud.

There are a lot of things people won’t write in an email because they know that someone — corporate IT, regulators, the boss — may be watching. But people are often more candid and less cautious behind the closed doors of a meeting room, which may be exactly what hackers are hoping to exploit as high-definition video conferencing and telepresence gains traction.

Our recent story on video conferencing security threats offers a broad overview about what vulnerabilities enterprises have to watch out for, which led Jean-Pierre Kellermann, a product line manager at Alcatel-Lucent, to chime in with some technical tips for video conferencing and telepresence pros.

Check out some of his video conferencing security suggestions (reproduced with permission and edited for clarity) after the jump…

As we use IP to transport any application, we automatically inherit all the threats from the IP world, such as denial of service attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks or viruses.

To avoid all these attacks, customers can use antivirus software to protect their video end-points, and encryption (based on SIP/TLS and SRTP) for the control channel and the media flows. The session border controller has an advantage in comparison of the traditional firewall because it’s adapted to these media flows; it can be used as a proxy between the external world and the enterprise LAN.

In general my recommendations to my customers are the following:

1) Against insecure endpoints and servers: Certificates with a public key infrastructure (PKI) should be mandatory and deployed for all the endpoints used (smartphones, IP-DECT, IP or SIP hardphones and servers).

2) Against attacks on the control channel: The encryption of the signaling should be mandatory by default with SIP/TLS.

3 ) Against eavesdropping/modification: The encryption of the media (voice and video) should be enabled by default with SRTP.

4) Against attacks on SIP trunking: The mutual authentication should be used between the devices used to establish this trunk. The encryption (signaling/media) can be used against the MITM attacks. I suggest also to finish all the SIP trunks on a SIP proxy, such as the SBC and not directly on an internal SIP server. The SBC can be a filter for all the SIP sessions established between an external cloud and an enterprise.

We sort of roll our eyes when we get these, and it looks like you’re doing the same. At a disaster planning session yesterday at Gartner’s Wireless, Networking & Communications Summit 2010 overlooking the marina in gorgeous San Diego – where it’s hard to imagine a disaster — research vice president John Girard pointed out that 76% of enterprises are ready for a power outage, but only 64% ready for a natural disaster.

So, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me while I eat my words in this next observation — three of Gartner’s European analysts were stranded this week in Europe by the Iceland volcano ash cloud, including research VP Steve Prentice, who was scheduled to give today’s keynote entitled, “Are we nearly there? The art of being there when you are not.”

He delivered his argument for enterprises to embrace “immersive virtual environments” via a (ever so slightly jittery) live videoconference — broadcast on a big screen to attendees — supported by a colleague in the room who IM’d him with any questions that popped up live or via Twitter… including mine.

“Technology has broken down the constraints of geography and technology has allowed us to project our presence,” Prentice told the audience. “We tend to take the view that being there is more important [than virtual attendance] …. but any of you who are familiar with teenage children [know] face-to-face communication isn’t always where it needs to be.”

He set up a familiar scenario — presence matters when we have meetings. But what happens to people sitting in meetings? They reach for their smartphone or laptop and start checking email or doing something else other than participating or collaborating.

There’s no one answer for enterprises, Prentice said. In some cases, something like Cisco’s Telepresence might be the solution. For others, it might be appropriate to use an avatar-based virtual reality environment such as Second Life (though I confess I’m still skeptical on this one, but who would’ve thought Facebook would have a business use five years ago?).

The key is not the technology itself, Prentice said. High-def or 3D doesn’t guarantee productivity. It’s understanding user behavior and needs, which is where a unified communications specialist can shine — making sure the next unpronounceable volcano doesn’t shut down your business.

“Don’t necessarily go for the highest technology solution,” Prentice said. “Sometimes simple solutions work best. Technology succeeds when it meets the needs people care about.”

The notion that telepresence could reduce business travel should be bad news to the travel industry, right? Business travel is bread and butter for airlines and hotels.

And yet, hotel chains appear to be embracing the technology. Both Marriott International and Starwood Hotels and Casinos have opened public telepresence rooms in a couple of pilot locations this month, both using Cisco’s TelePresence technology. Mariott has opened rooms in New York City and Bethesda, Md., and plans to open at least a dozen more across the U.S. and Europe, China and Brazil. Starwood opened rooms at its W Chicago City Center and at its Sheraton on the Park in Sydney, Australia. It has plans to open more rooms in New York, Toronto and Los Angeles this summer.

Mary Casey, vice president of corporate global sales at Starwood, told me her company was prompted to install telepresence rooms in its hotels after speaking with large corporate customers who were looking to reduce their travel costs.  She said one of Starwood’s largest customers in Chicago said told her that it had been investing in telepresence rooms across the world, but there were certain regional hubs where it wasn’t practical for the company to make an investment in the technology because a company-owned telepresence room in such locations wouldn’t be used enough to justify the investment.

Casey says that large corporate clients, especially those who have invested in telepresence in certain locations, are the main targets of her hotels’ telepresence rooms. She said smaller companies haven’t expressed much interest in such services yet. However, she thinks that might just be a matter of educating the market on the experience the technology can offer. She also expects some non-corporate clients to use the technology, based on what she’s heard from Tata Communications, Starwood’s technology services partner in the telepresence venture.

“If we listen to our partners at Tata, they’re beginning to see their public telepresence offerings used by different segments, such as suites used by families who are spread around the world, who want to celebrate events like a birthday party,” she said.

Casey and Starwood clearly see telepresence as an opportunity, not a threat.  Perhaps someday some hotels will have just as many telepresence rooms as they do beds.

Now airlines, on the other hand — I don’t see them adapting quite as well.

Logitech is best known as a manufacturer of peripheral devices for PCs, especially keyboards and mice. With only a line of standard-definition webcams, Logitech’s specialty is not enterprise video.

With LifeSize, Logitech graduates from selling peripheral devices to consumers and small businesses to selling an enterprise solution. It’s a whole different ballgame. In addition to endpoint devices, LifeSize sells HD videoconferencing infrastructure, such as multipoint control units (MCUs), gateways and security devices.

In the wake of Cisco’s attempt to acquire Tandberg (a deal which might be collapsing), LifeSize probably recognized that competing in the enterprise video market will require the backing of a larger corporate partner.  Logitech might have the money to boost LifeSize’s marketing budget, but it doesn’t bring the right sales channel to the table.

The most logical next step for Logitech will be to approach key unified communications competitors to Cisco like Avaya, Siemens and Microsoft to build up video interoperability partnerships.

When Cisco and Tandberg agreed to their video marriage two weeks ago, the dowry was set at $3 billion. And the deal was contingent upon the approval of the owners of 90% of Tandberg’s stock.

According to Reuters (via GigaOm), Swedish brokerage SEB Enskilda has told Cisco that it represents 21 shareholders who own 24% of Tandberg’s stock, and those shareholders want more money.  “We think the price is too low,” Amund Lunde told Reuters. Lunde is CEO of life insurance firm Oslo Pensjonsforsikring, which owns 1% of Tandberg, It’s not clear what it would take to win over these holdouts, but clearly Cisco will have to dig deeper to get a controlling interest in the company.

Apparently investors have been telling the Norwegian press that something stinks about the Tandberg deal. According to the Financial Times (via Norwegian language site Dagen IT) Rasmussen Group CEO Rune Selmar said Cisco’s promise of three-year bonus agreements to “key” Tandberg employees “probably explains part of management’s positive attitude to the acquisition.”

Ouch. That sounds awfully close to an ugly accusation.

For example, when President Allison Taylor (yet another reason I love this show — seasons ago, they debuted David Palmer as the first black president, and now Allison Taylor as the first woman president, who far out-acts Geena Davis from Commander in Chief) signs an executive pardon for a seemingly trustworthy source, she uses Cisco WebEx to electronically transfer her signature. An impending attack was taking place in DC, and he was the only person near the missiles who could help them, but he had a small window of opportunity. Time was of the essence, and the electronic signature was the best way to save time. Thanks to the product placement from Cisco, and a ringing endorsement from the head FBI agent (“We’ve already…set it up via WebEx, it’ll be able to give us a secure digital signature,” Agent Moss says), she was able to get her signature on the pardon to the source immediately and allow for the mission to take place.

When the acting heads of the group responsible for the day’s terrorist attacks decide to “meet” and discuss the next course of action after their plans had been foiled, they use a fancy UC product to do so, which allowed for roundtable discussion with private messaging and a button that allowed them “raise their hands,” but it also allowed for their anonymity with voice disguisers and a blank avatar per user (A driving part of the plot was that the group responsible for the attacks was unaware of each others’ identities, knowing only that they had the same vested interest in attacking American targets.). The UC product also allowed for document transfer among the members of the call. While Cisco was heavily shown in other scenes, I could not find any trace of a Cisco trademark in this scene — perhaps they don’t want to be associated with terrorists.

Then, in the season finale, a three-screen Cisco TelePresence setup allowed the Attorney General to question the President’s daughter and acting chief-of-staff, Olivia Taylor, about her role in the death of Jonas Hodges, who was suspected of treason and killed while in FBI custody. TelePresence allowed the AG, along with two other Justice Department agents, to interview Olivia with each person on a separate screen, and a safe network to make sure no hackers would get any of Olivia’s testimony. With clear detail in each person’s face, it would be more difficult to lie about a question, as she had three people watching her body language. It also allowed the AG to upload phone records and documents to Olivia, who was stowed away at the White House after the day’s events (including a siege at the White House and a DC biological weapon bomb scare), so she could verify them remotely and securely during the call without leaving the White House or setting up a separate secure line. Of course, it was all for naught, as Olivia later crumbled and fessed up to hiring someone to kill Hodges.

You can see all of these clips and more from past seasons on the Cisco website. Who knows how Cisco TelePresence or Cisco WebEx will aid Jack Bauer during season eight of 24, as he takes on a whole new set of technologically savvy terrorists?

Burke noted in an email from Nemertes that the flu outbreak in Mexico has prompted executives from Japanese companies like Sony and Sharp to cancel trips to their Mexican production facilities. He said telepresence would be a viable way for these executives to keep their face-to-face meetings with Mexican staff.

Vendors have so far focused their business cases for telepresence on the reduction of travel expenses, green initiatives and increased productivity. But clearly telepresence can also factor into business continuity and disaster recovery planning.

Extending that a bit further, desktop video should also get some attention thanks to swine flu. If a pandemic does indeed strike, many people would appreciate the option of working from home while the virus runs its course over the course of weeks or months.

Tandberg’s server already enables interoperability with non-telepresence Tandberg video endpoints and with Microsoft Office Communications Server. However, until now, the vast majority of immersive telepresence systems on the market have been extremely proprietary. Telepresence systems are generally unable to maintain the immersive, multi-screen, high-definition experience they are known for when a session is transmitted across vendors. In many cases telepesence systems from different vendors can’t communciate with each other at all.

The new interoperability from Tandberg claims to deliver that telepresence quality to sessions between Tandberg and Polycom products. This ineroperability will be especially important to inter-enterprise communications, enabling Tandberg customers to communicate and collaborate with Polycom customers.

There is no word on whether Tandberg will add interoperability with its other major telepresence rival, Cisco, but in this announcement the company said it will “continue to build on its successes by working to develop immersive interoperability with additional telepresence systems – both proprietary and standards-based.”

I shot this demo of the phone at the Microsoft booth at VoiceCon Orlando 2008.

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The only aspect of the Roundtable phone that troubled me was Microsoft.  It’s a software company, not a hardware company. It does Windows and lets others build the PCs. It does Windows Mobile and lets others do the smartphone. And when Microsoft does venture into hardware, it tends to do it in the consumer market, and with mixed results (see Zune, XBox).  So it wasn’t clear to me why Microsoft was trying to get into this business.

Granted, the Roundtable integrates with Office Communications Server, but every phone equipment vendor under the sun is looking to integrate with OCS these days. Walk the exhibitor’s hall at this year’s VoiceCon and see that for yourself.

Apparently Microsoft agrees that it’s not the ideal vendor for a product like Roundtable. It announced at VoiceCon this week that it is transferring the Roundtable phone to Polycom, which will become the sole distributor of the device. Polycom is re-branding Roundtable as the CX5000, which integrates it into Polycom’s existing line of conference phone products. Microsoft will continue to manufacture the device, but as far as I can tell, this phone is now going to market as a Polycom product. Microsoft will continue to support customers who bought the device through it, but all subsequent support will be provided by Polycom.

According to Tim Yankey, director of voice product marketing at Polycom, said Microsoft will stop selling Roundtable on April 13 and hand over sales, marketing and distribution to Polycom. The sales price under Polycom will be $4300.

Although Microsoft will continue to manufacture the device, Yankey told me that Polycom has the right to make changes and additions to the phone in the future.

Polycom also announced at VoiceCon that it will begin offering 1080p and 720p resolution in its high definition telepresence systems. This is the broadcast quality video that competitors such as Tandberg and Cisco already offer in their telepresence systems.