Siemens, Polycom In Pact For Conferencing Solutions

Siemens Ltd and Polycom Inc have forged a strategic alliance in India for providing premium-quality, IP-ready audio and video conferencing solutions.

A Siemens release said the partnership is the latest in a series of business expansion initiatives that the company has launched last year to further its market dominance in the interactive convergence solutions market.

Claiming that Siemens has pioneered most of the cutting-edge solutions in the enterprise networks market in India, the release said they include the first IP-ready EPABXs, the first plug-and-play call centres suite (Hipath Procenter) and the all-in-one IP ready Polycom audio and video conferencing solutions.

"Indian enterprises in the corporate and government sectors recognise the advantages of audio and video conferencing as a huge travel-cost saver and collaboration and productivity enhancer," said Peter Gartenberg, executive vice-president, ICN-EN Siemens Ltd.

Leo Cortjens, vice-president and general manager (Asia-Pacific), Polycom Inc said: "Worldwide, the Siemens-Polycom alliance has helped us become the dominant provider in the audio and video conferencing space. With today's announcement, we expect to establish the same position in the Indian market."

Of late, it has been observed that demand for video conferencing equipment has been on the uptrend, driven by immense improvement in telecom infrastructure, availability of ISDN lines, greater IP-bandwidths and leased lines at competitive rates. Many state governments are building up video conferencing networks to link district headquarters with the state capital to facilitate better governance.

Polycom Inc develops, manufactures and markets the full range of high-quality, easy-to-use and affordable voice and video communication endpoints, video management software, multi-network gateways, multi-point conferencing and network access solutions.

Siemens Ltd is a leading electrical and electronics company with a presence in energy, information and communication, transportation and healthcare.