Glynn Jones
Vice President – Voice Solutions, EMEA
Interview: Gulraiz Khalid
Gulraiz Khalid – Could you please give a brief overview of Polycom?
Glynn Jones – Polycom deals in the communications industry with our especial focus on Unified Communications. Polycom is based out of California, USA employing over 4,500 people globally, having research and development all over the world from the US to China, India, Denmark and such. It’s a global 1.6 billion dollar business.
GK – As a solutions provider, how do you see the differences between the South Asia, Middle Eastern and the US market?
GJ – How do I see the market differences? I think that’s a very good question. The markets for us in Europe and Southern Asia are perhaps more complex than the US. So we use local people to reach out to the market in these areas. The growth of these markets is also very different; we are seeing fantastic growth in especially Asia. I think web conferencing has moved from a switch based network, an ISDN network to IP which is a generation shift in people’s adoption. One of the great things about web conferencing and video collaboration is that it supports those companies and enterprises which have a multi-regional, multi-national base of operations.
GK – So in order to use your services, the end users not only have to have to your software but also your hardware equipment?
GJ – The answer to that is yes. The root system uses our equipment. The traditional video conferencing may also be using our equipment in many cases. But for those people who are mobile, we have applications that work on smartphones, laptops and tablets etc. for example if you use our application on your iPad you may as well be connected to the rest of the users on the video collaboration conference going on and doesn’t always have to be a same-to-same type of user on both ends but one could be using the complete application with all the hardware and one could just be using the app on an iPad. So the real difference between Polycom’s solutions in comparison to the other web conferencing apps on the internet is that it successfully takes users from different platforms to combine them into one video conferencing without any problems in doing so.
What we’re doing now is that we’re trying to bring together not just the business applications but also all kinds of web conferencing applications to work together. We are trying to make for example the users on Skype join the web conferencing on a Polycom platform.
GK – What is the current situation with the competition?
GJ – To be honest, we have no competitors, we are the market leaders in unified communications but that is not the only things we’re doing. We do have competition in somer areas, but we as a company only like to lead our competition. We realized a market share of over 78{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10} last year for our target segment in the worldwide market and we are expecting our company to grow at 12{e1f18614b95d3cd6e4b3128e1cd15d99b042a60a5a19c19b7a8e07e7495efa10} per annum for the coming years.
GK – The general trend in the industry is that the emerging markets come out as the more profitable markets for solutions providers in the ICT industry today, however it maybe not the same case for you as unified communications is maybe too advanced for the emerging markets to adapt to on a large scale. What would like to say about that?
GJ – I wouldn’t agree to that. You are right when it comes to adaptation, but then again the market is so huge and is growing at such a high rate creating a dire need for the implementation of more technology into its infrastructure, well that’s where we come in. We’re providing video collaboration, audio conferencing and all other types of communications technology. We don’t provide network equipment or devices such as hub roots etc. as we do not deal in data transfer but we help in creating and using the data per say.
GK – Does your equipment enable other unified communications applications apart from your own to run on it?
GJ – Right now, we do not have any other companies with such software that is capable of providing the same service that we do. But what we are doing is we are working on different standards on audio and video and trying to enable them for usage by other companies or vendors who may want to join this business later on. It is one the most important parts of our R&D these days.
GK – Please talk a little about your latest innovations.
GJ – We have announced last October, a whole new wave of innovations which ranges from applications for mobile, redesigns for root systems etc. with different user interfaces, different software protocols, the ability to provide better quality with same inputs and better, tighter security. We’ve announced cloud based applications platform bringing Skype users into the same meeting. These cloud applications are customizable to the customer’s requirement. We’ve also introduced some personal systems which are very high end executive office systems. So basically all we’re doing with these new products so far is that we’re thriving to make Unified Communications ubiquitous for everyone and so far we’ve been facing success in doing so.
