Polycom is a Founding Member of The Open Visual Communications Consortium

Deliver intercompany connectivity to accelerate the reach and value of customer investments in video and unified communication services and infrastructure

Contribute to fair and equitable standards, establish guidelines for exchange expansion, and create acceptable performance criteria for all consortium members

Preserve their investment in multiple technologies that bring differentiated value for industry commercialization efforts

• Open Standard Platform for a Large Variety of Video Solutions – Not a limited, closed environment for a single vendor's products, the Consortium plans to support H.323, SIP, H.264 Cisco Microsoft, BroadSoft and IBM solutions in mixed interaction. The Consortium will have access available to and from private enterprises using private line QoS networks or the public Internet. These options are not available through many other exchanges and therefore provide a reasonable entry point for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and, ultimately, consumer subscribers who cannot afford costly private line connections.
• The Largest Reach of Global Video Endpoints from "Day 1" – No slow ramp-up will be required to reach critical mass. Further, unlike the proprietary, telepresence-only, exchanges, the Open Visual Communications Consortium will support the full spectrum of video systems from immersive to room systems to high definition and standard definition, and eventually for the broad and growing pool of desktop clients (Microsoft® Office Communications Server, IBM® Lotus® Sametime®, and others).
• A Service Delivery Environment—Not Just Multimedia Dial-tone – Subscribers will have access to numerous hosted video applications and services as well as a worldwide network of public rooms. Other telepresence exchanges do not offer any comparable service to these options.
• Universal Availability – The Consortium plans to provide customers with alternatives to closed, proprietary exchanges. Consortium services will be made available thru Consortium members and partners. Open Visual Communications Consortium services are planned to be commercially available globally through many of the same channels that Polycom products are purchased in most cases—that is, Channels, MSPs, and Service Providers.

Please contact ovccinfo@polycom.com for more information.