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BUSINESS INTERVIEW Taking UC to the cloud


Having taken UC to the cloud Outsourcery and Polycom are united in their ambitions to drive the market. According to James Griffin, Director of Product Strategy at Outsourcery, rapid uptake is set to accelerate further driven in great part by the benefits of hosted videoconferencing.


James Griffin I


n December last year Outsourcery plumped for the Polycom UC Intelligent Core


infrastructure to advance its strategic aim of achieving true integrated cloud-based voice and video collaboration within Microsoft UC environments. Outsourcery is now ramping up its channel activity and is advocating a cloud-based model that allows businesses to use advanced UC capabilities such as videoconferencing on a per-user, fixed-cost basis, and without investing in new hardware and infrastructure. And according to Griffin, Outsourcery is seeing positive traction across the unified communications market as Unified Lync is one of the mainstream videoconferencing offerings.


“There has been a positive uptake, in particular for face-to-face communications where we have seen 32 per cent of new Unified Lync users after two months use video as their main method of contacting their working colleagues,” explained Griffin. “Hosted videoconferencing is popular among peer-to- peer users and adoption is rapid. This adoption is then evolving to the boardroom as


companies begin to invest in larger room-based solutions. Hosted videoconferencing is also popular with companies that have multiple sites as well as certain vertical sectors such as the legal industry which has specific requirements for meetings.”


Given Outsourcery’s pedigree in the cloud space there should be no surprise about the level of market penetration it has achieved with Lync. Outsourcery is continuing to work with leading hardware providers such as Polycom to ensure that it can offer best of breed solutions to partners and customers. “Polycom continues to adapt its technologies to deliver hosted videoconferencing solutions, and Outsourcery is providing feedback to Polycom on how to develop its technology,” noted Griffin. “This process ensures that it provides the appropriate service for hosted environments.”


Growth platform Outsourcery opted for Polycom because it offers a reliable and scalable platform featuring native integration with Microsoft, a necessary attribute. Also important is the Polycom brand which, says Griffin, instantly builds trust with companies and helps strengthen the offering of Unified Lync. The integration with Polycom is also significant


because videoconferencing has a number of different flavours and can be offered in a variety of ways to end users. “For example, videoconferencing can be offered on a personal basis or as a hybrid one that combines both private and large room-based solutions,” noted Griffin. “The hybrid model provides additional flexibility as users can access the two during meetings depending on their requirements. Original vendors do not provide end services to channel partners. This offers companies such as Outsourcery the opportunity to build services that add value to businesses.”


By partnering with Polycom, Outsourcery has improved its pipeline around Unified Lync. The company – which was named Microsoft’s Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year 2010 and Dynamics Hosting Partner of the Year 2010 – aims to keep ahead of the market competition and is working towards being the leading global provider of Lync deployments using video. “Outsourcery will be focusing significant investment on achieving this goal,” commented Griffin. “Additionally, ensuring that the technology is embedded with different flavours of Lync will help keep Outsourcery ahead of the market and offer more choice to customers and partners.”


In the spirit of a true working partnership, Outsourcery is influencing Polycom’s product development and the capabilities of Polycom solutions. “Outsourcery spends much time with Polycom consulting and working in partnership to help develop the videoconferencing solutions to sync with Outsourcery’s cloud technologies and services,” commented Griffin.


Collaboration


“A prime driver for working with Polycom is that its technology sits well with our hosting model. Outsourcery will continue to provide feedback to Polycom’s development teams. By doing this we are able to provide high value robust communication and collaboration tools to a broad market. This is helping transform businesses through cost savings, improved flexibility, efficiency, scalability, and leads to multi-tenanting and the virtualisation of infrastructure.”


Deriving maximum value from Microsoft UC environments requires the ability to


collaborate with anyone, anywhere, and in the way that allows smarter decisions to be made sooner, believes Griffin. Unified Lync has been one of the main drivers for achieving this happy state, so unsurprisingly there has been significant interest from channel partners looking to extend their portfolios and give the market what it wants. Outsourcery’s latest Unified Lync event, held at Polycom’s high-tech London base last month, generated much interest and discussion among the partners and customers who attended.


“As a result of the event a number of direct customer opportunities have emerged with three well known household brands,” said Griffin. “This level of interest is set to grow as we will host events on an ongoing basis, including an event in early December where Outsourcery will unveil its 18 month roadmap. Such events help to educate existing partners and customers on new product updates, and enlighten prospective partners and customers on what Unified Lync and Polycom can deliver to their business.”


There has been positive uptake and adoption is rapid


32 COMMS DEALER OCTOBER 2011 www.comms-dealer.com


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