Polycom Announces Cloud-Based Media Services

Polycom’s New Accordent Cloud Service, Enabling Video Content Management Solution for Mass Adoption, Debuts at NAB 2011

Wellington], Apr. 12, 2011 (NAB Show Booth SL3812) – Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), a global leader in unified communications (UC), has announced Polycom’s Accordent Media Services – Powered by Microsoft Windows Azure™, a cloud services offering hosted on the Windows Azure platform that enables organisations to rapidly and cost effectively deploy a single, secure, searchable video content management solution for all their video assets – from CEO-calibre shareholder meetings, to routine video calls between end points or end user desktops.

Accordent Media Services – Powered by Windows Azure brings world-class cloud-based hosting, delivery, and video content management capability within reach for organisations looking to extract optimal productivity benefits from their growing libraries of multi-source, multi-format video assets; without having to add extensive IT resources or make major capital expenditures on networking or storage hardware.

The service includes an installed, branded, and fully functional Accordent Media Management System, hosted within Windows Azure datacentres, which delivers content in various formats to widely distributed audiences via the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN). Customers will be able to submit content created from remote Accordent capture products across the cloud using Microsoft Expression Encoder, video conferencing integrations, and desktop Microsoft Lync 2010 clients. Additionally, the service will also provide full enterprise video content management capabilities (categorising, indexing, retention management, etc.), publishing to customer Microsoft SharePoint 2010 solutions, and scalable delivery of live and on-demand content over the Windows Azure CDN.

The service builds on the capabilities of the Windows Azure platform, an Internet-scale cloud services platform hosted through Microsoft datacentres. The Windows Azure platform helps reduce the need for up-front technology purchases and simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

“Microsoft is delighted with the launch of Accordent Media Services – Powered by Windows Azure, the first enterprise media management system hosted on the Windows Azure platform,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft Corp. “This new service brings the power of Accordent applications and Microsoft infrastructure unified into a complete Enterprise Video Management solution available to the customer in the cloud.”

“This offering is in response to tremendous demand for us to provide Accordent media management capabilities in an off-premise, cloud-based model,” said Mike Newman, vice president and general manager Video Content Management Solutions, Polycom. “We look forward to working with Microsoft to bring this powerful solution to market and to enable entirely new classes of users to experience the benefits of ‘at-your-fingertips’ video content.”

Accordent Media Services – Powered by Windows Azure was unveiled today within the Microsoft Cloud and Digital Content Management showcase at the 2011 NAB Show, currently underway at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Polycom recently acquired Accordent Technologies to become the leader in the burgeoning Video Content Management and Delivery market by integrating Polycom’s leading open standards UC Intelligent Core™ and market leading UC endpoints with Accordent’s innovative open standards video content management solution.

The Accordent platform provides capture solutions for all major video use cases, whether delivering highly scalable live webcasts from the studio, providing automated rich media webcasting from the meeting or classroom, adding a streaming extension to videoconferences, or enabling user-generated content from the desktop.

Through the Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN), Microsoft and Polycom deliver a complete, standards-based, end-to-end UC solution based on the Polycom UC Intelligent Core and optimised for Microsoft environments. Building on a long strategic alignment with Microsoft, Accordent strengthens and further differentiates Polycom’s deep native interoperability with Microsoft Lync and SharePoint.

ENDS

© Scoop Media