Polycom bags Essar contract

Nasdaq listed Polycom, a US based provider of unified communications on Friday announced that it has won a contract from India's Essar Group to provide RealPresence solutions and an enterprise video collaboration network to the group's 75,000 employees across globe. Essar Group has its offices is spread across Hazira, Vadinar, Mumbai, London and New York. Polycom competes with its bigger rival Cisco which has a competing product TelePresence in Unified Communications. Currently, the India UC market is growing at a growth rate of 23.5%, as per a report by consulting firm Netscribes. "In the current competitive landscape, businesses such as ours are pressured to find the most efficient and effective ways to increase productivity and accelerate operations at a faster pace. Video collaboration is mission-critical to Essar Group, and we have chosen Polycom for its expertise and leadership in delivering innovative and secure video collaboration solutions," Jayantha Prabhu, Group CTO, Essar Group. Essar would have Polycom video solutions linked with Microsoft Lync environment for communication across IM, presence, call control, web conferencing, video and voice collaboration. The move help BSE listed Essar to increased productivity, and reduced travel and downtime costs - and ensured business continuity, to result in a rapid return-on-investment. Essar is deploying Polycom in its head office in Mahalaxmi and three other offices in Mumbai connecting with those across the globe. . "Polycom is focused on making it possible for everyone to use video as their preferred way to collaborate, from the boardroom to the desktop and on mobile devices," said Neeraj Gill, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Polycom. Polycom partnered with Systems Integrator AGC Networks Limited to enable the complete end-to-end solution for Essar. Mumbai's Essar Group has businesses across sectors such as Steel, Oil & Gas, Power, BPO & Telecom Services, Shipping, Ports, Projects and Minerals. The Group has operations in more than 25 countries in five continents. Both Cisco and Polycom are planning to offer the video conferencing solutions on the tablet PCs to Indian corporates based upon proprietary and open source platforms. Cisco has launched a tablet Cius to promote its UC solutions while Polycom is planning to offer it across open source platforms such as Google's Android. According to the IDC, global enterprise videoconferencing market is expected to grow to about $3.2 billion in 2012.