“It’s no secret the USB webcam business is suffering due to the growth of embedded webcams. Consumers particularly are not concerned with high definition videoconferencing. … Good enough quality is fine when you are talking to friends and family,” Forrester Analyst Phil Karcher said.

Karcher believes that consumers will pick up on high definition (HD) videoconferencing slower than enterprises: “While desktop videoconferencing is becoming more popular in both the consumer and business markets, business buyers have a stronger appetite for high-quality audio and video.”

Due to this “good enough quality” attitude from consumers, some major players have exited from the webcam business, like Cisco. At the same time, consumer-oriented webcam vendors are targeting enterprises, like Logitech. The vendor recently evolved it’s classic desktop webcam into a small-group camera [shown left]. By pushing the roundtable BCC950 ConferenceCam, Logitech hopes to fill a niche for businesses craving video conferencing systems at palatable prices (compare a $249.99 conference cam to a $5,000 room-based video solution).

Karcher says that Logitech isn’t the only consumeristic vendor pushing into the enterprise market. Both Google and Skype offer free and professional video conferencing products and services for organizations to experiment with.  

“ The consumerization of IT is accelerating this trend. Its also more viable with the cloud allowing small start ups to scale up their operations by experimenting in the consumer markets before introducing more hardened enterprise offerings.”

Time will tell whether this enterprise experimentation will be enough to keep USB webcam vendors afloat.

Citing “people familiar with the situation,” the Financial Times reports that the private equity firm Gores Group has approached Polycom (again) about acquiring the videoconferencing vendor and combining it with Siemens Enterprise Networks, the company Gores formed when it acquired a majority stake in Siemens Enterprise Communications in 2008 and merged it with Enterasys Networks.

Gores first approached Polycom in October, the Times says, but its overtures were politely declined. Gores has come calling again because it heard that another private equity firm, Apax Partners, is also in the hunt for Polycom.

When Cisco Systems announced its plan to buy Tandberg,  Polycom’s primary rival, last October, industry experts told us that Cisco’s rivals in IP telephony, unified communications and networks would gravitate toward Polycom, forming tight partnerships with the enterprise video company in order to offset the broadened product portfolio Cisco would have to offer in unified communications. That’s definitely been borne out by what we’ve seen this year. Polycom announced partnerships with Siemens and Juniper in January. At VoiceCon Polycom and HP unveiled a new relationship that includes marketing and sales cooperation and some future joint technology development.

Now Gores Group wants to take things past the “friends” stage and establish a true marriage of companies. It makes sense from a technology perspective. Siemens puts out a quality UC and IP telephony product. Its OpenScape UC Server 2010 won Best of VoiceCon last week. The Enterasys division of Siemens is also well-respected for its technology. Its customers tend to be loyal.

But would Polycom want to tie itself to a company with such a small North American presence? Siemens has a sturdy international business, but its still just a small timer in the United States. And Enterasys is such a small part of the IP networking industry in general. One would think that if Polycom were interested in merging with a UC and/or networking vendor, it would set its sites one someone like HP ProCurve or Avaya, both of whom are a much “bigger deal.” Avaya was billing itself as the number one vendor in unified communications at VoiceCon, a claim it can now make since it closed the deal on Nortel Enterprise Solutions. HP ProCurve is the number two enterprise networking vendor out there and its a division of HP, one of the biggest IT vendors in the world. Both companies would bring good technology and good market opportunities to the table in a Polycom merger.

On the other hand, Gores Group might present the best option Polycom has for a strategic merger rather than a straight-up acquisition. We haven’t heard any rumors from HP about it being on the hunt for a video vendor. It’s sole participation in the videoconferencing space is its Halo service. Silver Lake Partners, the private equity firm that owns Avaya, may not be in an acquisitive mood after spending $900 million on the Nortel deal. The Times says the Apax-Polycom have put Polycom’s possible price tag at $3 billion or so. If Gores is prepared to spend that kind of money, it could lead to some interesting things for both Siemens and Polycom customers.

Shortly after Cisco brought Tandberg into the fold, Logitech acquired LifeSize, and earlier this month, Radvision announced plans to acquire Aethra.
 
Incumbent Polycom quickly mobilized with a counteroffensive play, hyper-focusing on a strategy to retain their current market share and pull customers away from the monolithic Cisco. Forging new partnerships, cultivating deep alliances with existing partners and an aggressive focus on product development is Polycom’s core strategy.

Betting that enterprises are most likely to deploy telepresence as a service over investing in costly in-house solutions, Polycom recently teamed with Juniper Networks to provide optimized platforms for service providers.

In January, Polycom revealed a global reseller agreement with Siemens that will enable customers to leverage the productivity and cost-saving benefits of Polycom telepresence, high-definition (HD) video conferencing solutions and desktop video collaboration applications through seamless integration with the OpenScape UC environment.

Polycom refined their partnership with IBM by expanding Polycom’s integrated voice and visual communication solutions for customers deploying IBM Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC2) environments with support for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes.

On Feb. 16, Polycom announced a solution to substantially reduce network bandwidth cost savings for customers. By providing support for a standards-based video compression technology, H.264 High Profile, the company says bandwidth requirements for high-definition (HD) telepresence and standard definition (SD) video conferencing can be reduced by as much as 50%. Support for H.264 High Profile on Polycom HDX room and personal telepresence systems is slated for April.

Polycom also announced an expanded telepresence product portfolio, Polycom HDX 6000 View, which is a full-featured HD room telepresence system with a price point just under $5,000. For companies looking for room-based, 1080p video resolution, check out the Polycom HDX 9000 which will also be available in April. Starting list price is $24,999.