Polycom® RealPresence® Video Solutions Selected By Essar Group to Enhance Collaboration and Speed Decision Making for 75,000 Employees Across Seven Global Offices, from Mumbai to New York to London

With presence across various sectors including steel, energy, power, communications, shipping ports, logistics and construction, Indian-based Essar Group’s operations span more than 25 countries, across five continents, reaching 75,000 employees worldwide

MUMBAI, India--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), today announced that Essar Group recently selected Polycom^® RealPresence^® video solutions, including Polycom® RealPresence® Immersive systems and the Polycom^® RealPresence^® Platform, as the hub of the company’s enterprise video collaboration network. Now, executives and employees across seven of the company’s major offices around the globe can connect and collaborate with each other “face-to-face” via secure, high-definition Polycom video. Essar is looking at increased productivity – including faster decision making and reduced travel and downtime costs – and ensured business continuity, to result in a rapid return-on-investment (ROI).

“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”

With so many dispersed teams, Essar values communication highly and looked to Polycom to transform how teams collaborate, creating a new collaboration culture in which high-definition video is considered an essential tool across the company. Essar is deploying Polycom in its head office in Mahalaximi; three offices in Mumbai; Hariza Gujarat; Vadinar Gujarat; London, UK; and New York City, USA; with plans to expand the solution across all of its offices.

The company selected the Polycom® RealPresence® Immersive (RPX™ 400) Series, a fully immersive video experience with an all-inclusive meeting space that brings HD video, audio, and content-sharing to a cinematic video wall. The meeting experience is so lifelike that users can completely forget about the technology and focus solely on the people for a natural and dynamic meeting experience.

Essar’s implementation will also include the Polycom RealPresence Platform, selected due to its robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability, and security. Because of Polycom’s focus on interoperability, the RealPresence Platform transforms islands of employees and fragmented communications systems into a seamless video enterprise, which makes enterprise-grade video easily and securely accessible to all authorized personnel whether they’re mobile, remote, or on-site.

In addition, due to Polycom's many patented innovations (Polycom holds more than 800 patents) and use of the H.264 High-Profile open standard, Polycom RealPresence video solutions use as much as 50 percent less bandwidth than competing solutions, helping to lower total cost of ownership and accelerate ROI.

“Polycom's solutions are best-in-class, offering the most comprehensive unified communications infrastructure,” said Mr. Jayantha Prabhu, Group CTO, Essar Group. “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, secure, reliable and easy-to-use video collaboration solutions that satisfied all of our business objectives.”

“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 Mr. Neeraj Gill, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Polycom. “We are pleased that Polycom will help Essar to achieve increased productivity and more effective collaboration and engagement across their global operations.”

Polycom partnered with Systems Integrator AGC Networks Limited to enable the complete end-to-end video collaboration solution to meet Essar’s requirements. “We are pleased to be working together with Polycom to deliver and integrate the video collaboration solution across Essar's global offices, and enable them to streamline operations and reduce travel expenditures,” said Mr. S. K. Jha, MD & CEO, AGC Networks Limited.

Essar is also exploring ways to drive further competitive advantage with Polycom video collaboration solutions, including connecting Polycom video solutions and Microsoft® Lync™ environments for a seamless experience across all communication elements from IM, to presence, call control, web conferencing, video, and voice collaboration.

The company is also looking to incorporate mobility solutions into their communications environment, with Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile. RealPresence Mobile delivers enterprise-grade video on tablets and smartphones, extending the reach of video collaboration beyond the office and allowing mobile employees to participate in group or one-on-one video meetings on the device of their choice.

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions for telepresence, video, and voice powered by the Polycom^® RealPresence^® Platform. The RealPresence Platform interoperates with the broadest range of business, mobile, and social applications and devices. More than 400,000 organizations trust Polycom solutions to collaborate and meet face to face from any location for more productive and effective engagement with colleagues, partners, customers, specialists, and prospects. Polycom, together with its broad partner ecosystem, provides customers with the best total cost of ownership, interoperability, scalability, and security for video collaboration, whether on-premises, hosted, or cloud delivered. Visit www.polycom.com or connect with Polycom on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

About Essar Group

The Essar Group is a multinational conglomerate and a leading player in the sectors of Steel, Oil & Gas, Power, BPO & Telecom Services, Shipping, Ports, Projects and Minerals. In the steel business, Essar is a leading global producer on track to operating 14 MTPA steel capacity. The Group today employs 75,000 people across its operations in more than 25 countries in five continents. EAHL, part of the Essar Group, is a private company incorporated in Mauritius.

The Group continues to expand its global footprint, focusing on markets in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Australia. Essar invests significantly in the latest technology to drive forward and backward integration in its businesses, and on leveraging synergies between these businesses. It also focuses on in-house research and innovation to be a low-cost manufacturer with high quality products and innovative customer offerings.

© 2012 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom “Triangles” logo, and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.