Polycom taps McAfee to secure its unified comms and collaboration offerings

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 29 July 2010 15:20

Business IT - Security

Polycom and McAfee have announced plans to jointly develop and deliver secure unified communications and collaboration to enhance the security features of Polycom's video, telepresence and infrastructure products.

Polycom plans to design products that incorporate McAfee threat protection that will "shield Polycom telepresence users - from the desktop to the fully immersive suite - from potential and increasingly sophisticated security threats while making it easier to comply with privacy and confidentiality mandates."

They say that their alliance will "address a growing need for enhanced security as organisations of all sizes increasingly turn to videoconferencing and telepresence to reduce costs, improve productivity, and maintain operations in the face of business disruptions...[and] help IT managers in regulated industries lessen the burden of meeting compliance and reporting requirements."

Their alliance has three main areas of collaboration: joint research and development joint sales and market alignment, and joint participation in activities promoting innovation and standardisation of UC security solutions.

The two companies plan to join R&D forces to: incorporate McAfee threat protection, including the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator console, into Polycom UC endpoints and core infrastructure, thus offering increased management and protection; and to align monitoring and provisioning tools to "deliver powerful, secure device configuration and compliance capabilities."

They will support a range of joint go-to-market activities that will include: joint sales and technical training and post-sales support and service offerings and participation in promotional events, webinars and user conferences.