Polycom Announces Winners of Its First App Developer Contest, Awards X2O Media Top Award for Creating a Live and On-Demand Video Content Delivery App With Polycom® RealPresence® APIs

VANCOUVER, Canada--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), today announced the winners of its first App Developer Contest, challenging individuals and companies to submit solutions using Polycom® RealPresence® open application programming interfaces (APIs) to extend the value of the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform – the most comprehensive and interoperable UC&C software infrastructure for universal video collaboration. The winners were announced today during the company’s annual sales and partner conference, TEAM Polycom 2013 in Vancouver, held February 4-7, 2013.

“The creativity we saw in the submissions was astounding”

Polycom named three winners of the contest who received cash prizes and other recognition.

X2O Media won the grand prize with an application that delivers live and on-demand video content to digital signage devices, Polycom® VVX® IP phones, and video kiosks. The application uses APIs for Polycom video content management, video conferencing and IP phone systems to provide a comprehensive multi-channel video delivery solution. For example, a training session conducted via video conferencing can be captured and streamed to a variety of devices, so training content can be swiftly shared with more people.
Proton Media was named finalist with an application that combines Polycom video, Microsoft® Lync™ and Microsoft® SharePoint® in a persistent, web-based immersive environment bringing face-to-face collaboration to an interactive virtual world.
VQ Communication was named runner up for the integration of their VQ Ignite scheduling and call management application with the Polycom video conferencing platform.

X2O Media of Canada, Proton Media from the United States, and VQ Communications from the United Kingdom reflect the global nature of unified communications and video collaboration. Other registered contestants came from Australia, France, Hong Kong, India, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Their applications serve a wide variety of use cases including user interface integrations, vertical application extensions, and a programming language layer added to the Polycom® RealPresence® Media Management solution for content creation and publishing.

“The creativity we saw in the submissions was astounding,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President of Products and Services, Polycom. “It was a tough decision narrowing it down to our three winners. We had applications that organize video conferences on mobile devices such as iPads and others that create complete virtual collaboration environments featuring Polycom video. Ultimately, it came down to X2O Media and their comprehensive application for multi-channel video delivery, a solution that is requested by many of our customers. We’re so pleased with the response to the contest; it’s a real validation of the Polycom RealPresence Platform software infrastructure and the power of video collaboration.”

The contest, which ran from December 2012 through January 2013, was open to Polycom partners as well as third party companies and individuals. A panel of judges determined the winners based on five criteria: commercial applicability, user experience, productivity, third-party application integration, and innovation.

About the Polycom RealPresence Platform software infrastructure and open APIs

Polycom RealPresence Platform software infrastructure provides robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability, flexibility, and security. In October of 2012, Polycom announced enhancements to the RealPresence Platform, including the industry’s first open standards-based SVC (Scalable Video Coding), with 3X HD multipoint video call capacity for greater scalability, dramatically lower TCO, superior performance, and backwards- and forwards-compatibility to protect customer investments—all available through a software update. Additionally, the RealPresence Platform software offers multi-tenant capabilities so customers can use a single physical Polycom® RealPresence® Resource Manager solution to support multiple video deployments, optimizing resource investments and reducing operating costs.

In July 2012, Polycom announced a rich new suite of open APIs that facilitate the development of custom applications and extend the value of the RealPresence Platform. Polycom is providing independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators, service providers and customers with open APIs and software development kits (SDKs) to test, create, and ultimately deliver new software applications and solutions that integrate with the RealPresence Platform software and provide added value to video collaboration environments. Aimed at making video collaboration easier to integrate into everyday business processes, the APIs allow developers to tailor applications to seamlessly integrate with Polycom RealPresence video solutions such as provisioning, scheduling, conference management, billing, and resource reporting. ISVs and enterprise customers can obtain the APIs and SDKs and participate in a developer forum at developer.polycom.com. Organizations seeking formal testing and validation of their applications and integrations and engagement in go-to-market promotional activities with Polycom can do so by joining the Polycom Technology Partner Program. To learn more, visit www.polycom.com/partners/become-a-partner/technology-partners.html.

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in open standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice and video collaboration, trusted by more than 415,000 customers around the world. Polycom solutions are powered by the Polycom^® RealPresence^® Platform, comprehensive software infrastructure and rich APIs that interoperate with the broadest set of communication, business, mobile and cloud applications and devices to deliver secure face-to-face video collaboration in any environment. Polycom and its ecosystem of over 7,000 partners provide truly unified communications solutions that deliver the best user experience, highest multi-vendor interoperability, and lowest TCO. Visit www.polycom.com or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to learn how we’re pushing the greatness of human collaboration forward.

NOTE: The product plans, specifications, and descriptions herein are provided for information only and subject to change without notice, and are provided without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Polycom reserves the right to modify future product plans at any time. Products and related specifications referenced herein are not guaranteed and will be delivered on a when and if available basis.

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