Technology Reseller v20 2019

01732 759725 VENDOR PROFILE 38 Our management software enables IT to see what devices people are using and the quality of the connection, because that all feeds into the net promoter score of the UC&C technology In March 2019, nine months after completing its acquisition of Polycom, Plantronics announced that it was rebranding the $2 billion combined UC&C endpoint business as Poly. Naming the company after the Ancient Greek for ‘many’ sets the seal on an acquisition that always felt more like a merger of equals than a take-over (both companies are of a similar size, with the difference between Plantronics’ $850 million turnover and Polycom’s $1.1 billion due almost entirely to the latter’s service revenue). The union of the two companies, both specialists in the last metre of communication (3 metres in the case of video), has a certain logic as developments in unified communications and collaboration meant that Plantronics, with its heritage in headsets and audio products for the contact centre and office environments, and Polycom, best known for its audio and videoconferencing solutions for the boardroom and office, were both gravitating towards the same middle ground. “Essentially, you have two companies that are experts in the field of endpoint technologies – Plantronics, with headsets and conference phones and now acoustics management with Soundscape, and Polycom, with video systems, conference systems and desk phones. To meet demand from customers to collaborate in a different way, with more diversity of endpoint, Plantronics wanted to expand its speakerphone portfolio and desk devices and Polycom wanted to expand into personal communications and headsets, so the companies were starting to overlap,” explained Paul Clark, EMEA Managing Director of Poly. He added that bringing the two companies together under one brand will sharpen their focus on providing the best experience for users of Poly’s technologies at a time of significant change in the UC&C space. “Certain vendors will become the corporate standard for collaboration, for example Skype for Business, now moving to Microsoft Teams, but you will still have people in a company using Zoom or Webex, perhaps because that is what a supplier or partner wants. Even if the IT department says ‘We are only going to use Skype for Business in our organisation and nothing else’, the reality is that organisations will need to support different types of UC&C technology. Poly can help with the enablement of that. “Then, at the end point level, we will make the end point work with whatever technology you want to use. You might be using a Microsoft camera and a Plantronics headset, and I might be calling you using Skype for Business or Webex; I don’t want to care about any of that. I just want to get on with the call. Our objective is to make sure that the device you are using – headset, desk phone, speakerphone, video – can connect to any call irrespective of the underlying technology or collaboration service.” Clark points out that this is a growing requirement, as changing working practices, such as the rise in home- working and use of third spaces, have made the ability to collaborate with remote participants a requirement for small businesses as much as multi-national businesses with distributed sales teams around the globe. Coinciding with the greater reach of UC&C technologies, he suggests there has been a significant democratisation of the technology. “While the initial infrastructure may be managed by IT, device selection and even replacement has devolved down to the group or individual. That’s driven adoption. Sitting pretty However, IT still needs some level of control over what is being used on the network, as a poor choice of endpoint results in a poor experience. One of the obligations of Poly as a vendor is to provide insight into the last few metres. Our management software enables IT to see what devices people are using and the quality of the connection, because that all feeds into the net promoter score of the UC&C technology,” he said. Reseller benefits The unification of Plantronics and Polycom under one brand also has implications for reseller partners, which will become clearer later this year when Poly brings together the two separate partner programmes. In the meantime, Clark says the move has been welcomed across the board, by Polycom AV resellers, Plantronics contact centre specialists and resellers like Insight, CDW, Computacenter, BT that sold both brands. “In all cases, and I mean all cases, people have said they are really excited about the two companies coming together because they see the value of each, yet had to deal with them both separately – Polycom had a partner certification programme and Plantronics had a partner certification programme. When we introduce a single reseller programme later this year, resellers will get access to the broader Poly portfolio, which they can today, with consistent support and just one certification process.” Paul Clark, EMEA Managing Director of Poly, tells Technology Reseller why the company is well placed to be the end point vendor of choice for seamless collaboration Paul Clark