Polycom: Telepresence market to be worth US$17.8mn in 2009

[Libby]

US telecoms equipment vendor Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) expects the Latin American telepresence market to grow 70% in 2009 to US$17.8mn, Polycom's VP for the CALA region, Armando Trivellato told BNamericas.

Studies have estimated that the global market potential for all video solutions will be US$30bn in 2011, 10 times the level today, Trivellato added.

According to the executive, the biggest demand for telepresence and other video solutions comes from education in the broad sense of the word, meaning not only university campuses but training in general being carried out in a range of industries from banking to healthcare.

In Brazil's Minas Gerais state, for example, Polycom is working with municipal authorities to train officials in some 200 remote municipalities.

Trivellato believes that the time for telepresence in Latin America could not be better with companies obsessed with cost reduction and increasing productivity, while also being concerned about reducing their carbon footprint in flights.

Polycom estimates that one person's share of carbon emissions from taking a transatlantic flight is greater than the global emission of an automobile for a year. And the company says that on average productivity can increase by 30% as less time is spent traveling.

As regards cost saving, Trivellato estimates that a company that invests in a medium-priced solution at around US$6,000 can see a return on investment (ROI) within one to six months. Clearly the level of ROI depends on how much a company's employees normally travel.

"It doesn't mean that this is going to replace physical presence meetings, but you can cut out some of them. We used to have four core business reviews per year, all physical presence. Today we do two physical presence meetings and two meetings using video. We hold team meetings once a week using video... and they are quick meetings to discuss day to day things," Trivellato said.

According to Trivellato, with telepresence CEOs of multinationals can find the time to meet lower level managers, something that was difficult before.

DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS

Telepresence solutions do not all have to be major investments in special rooms equipped with multiple screens. A simple solution can be used on a personal computer screen.

The so-called immersive solution - which involves building a specialized room - can have up to 28 seats and come complete with ceiling microphones for directional sound to make it easy to identify which of the participants is speaking.

Trivellato sees the ease of use of controls, standardized meeting room layout, with the same chairs and background screen, as well as the hands free experience as essential to ensure that the technology is almost imperceptible to the meeting attendees.

"It is easier to speak on the phone when one is using hands free, when one can hear well what the other person is saying, when technology is not an obstacle for holding a meeting, " Trivellato said.

One hurdle that Polycom has encountered is that the quality of the meeting can depend a lot on the quality of the network. A split second of down time on a network can be annoying and distracting.

For that reason Polycom implements what is called lost package recovery, in which the technology adapts to any delays that occur to smooth out any interruptions. Their equipment is designed for high resolution video, which falls between standard and high definition, thereby ensuring that the quality of the image is good but does not use excessive bandwidth.

Comments ?

[smglass]

I find this curious, being that Polycom has had 10% rolling layoffs around the world all this year and are on a hiring freeze for all locations. That coupled with the fact that Cisco has the upper arm in the relationship with Polycom. To give you an example of how messed up that concept it, Cisco, when working with TANDBERG, totally went tech power hungry. Tberg laughed at them and Cisco pulled out with a heavy VTC and UC financial hit in the market. Tberg boomed in it's $$ and then aquired Codian which has made them shoot to the top in a way that would take years to even come close to competitive with.