ITWire

The CloudAXIS Suite is a browser-based extension to Polycom's RealPresence video collaboration platform designed to run virtualised on industry-standard hardware that can be installed on in-house servers of offered as a service from the cloud.

According to Polycom, it allows a user to "Bring contacts from all your presence-based applications into a global directory of participants that you drag and drop into a Polycom business-class video collaboration session, allowing others outside your organisation to securely join the conference via their browser with one click."

Polycom's, global, announcement of the product came with an endorsement from Jo Allison, acting CEO, Gen-i Australasia. According to Allison, it "provides a browser-based solution that is powerful and simple for the user, but has the backbone and infrastructure to ensure it meets the stringent security and quality requirements of the enterprise and the scalability and resilience of a service provider."

Polycom also announced a "completely redesigned user interface" with that will be available across its full suite of video collaboration products with "more than 20 new user innovations and features," along with new versions of its client software for PCs, Macs, tablets and smartphones that support the new user interface, Polycom UX.

The new mobile client, RealPresence Mobile 2.0 also incorporates Polycom SmartPairing technology that wirelessly connects iPads to Polycom conferences and lets users "control video meetings with their tablets and transfer a live video call from their tablet to a big screen with the swipe of a finger."

Other announcements were of the Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition, claimed to be "the industry's first multi-protocol, integrated software multipoint conference unit that runs on industry-standard servers," and an open, interoperable implementation of the H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), claimed to be able to support up to three times the capacity of current offerings.

Chetner said: "SVC allows us to be far more efficient in the delivery of video, and at much better quality...Up to 30 endpoints. Before if we had gone beyond 10 we would have had to lower the quality."

The company also announced a number of new video endpoints for rooms of varying sizes.

CloudAXIS Suite will be available to enterprises in Q1 of 2013 and Polycom plans to make it available in the same timeframe for service provider trials. The new desktop software, Polycom RealPresence Mobile 2.0 will be available for Windows in November and for Macs in the first half of 2013.