Polycom HD Video Conferencing Solution for Tablets

With the rise of powerful smartphones and tablets as primary communication devices, video calling is becoming a trendy technology. I published last month about HookFlash, an enterprise-grade video conferencing solution that launched at DEMO, and most recently, Tango, the mobile video calling service, released its desktop client.

Polycom provides one of the most widely used enterprise video conferencing solution, and it has recently acquired HP Halo, the biggest competitor of market leader Cisco. Today, the corporation is launching Polycom RealPresence  Mobile, its HD video software solution for tablets, available now on iPad 2, Motorola XOOM, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. More devices will follow.

I have not seen a demo, from the screen shots, it looks like the solution supports multiple video streams simultaneously and users can easily display content while talking to each other (see picture), make sure to check a demo if you are at CTIA, to confirm that the technology is working well.

RealPresence Mobile integrates with the existing Polycom UC infrastructure, meaning that existing customers will be able to extend their Polycom video conferencing capabilities to the tablets, making it easy to organize meetings with people wherever they are. The applications are endless, we can imagine better collaboration between doctors or between students and their professors, for example.

Polycom RealPresence Mobile features include (according to Polycom):

• Enables tablet users to join group video meetings with other colleagues joining via tablets, laptops, or desktop and immersive video room systems.
• Enables users to choose the device of their choice, supporting multiple operating systems including Android, iOS, and other platforms in the future.
• user interface with system touch control for ease of use, including the
• simultaneously view content shared from other participants and toggle back/forth between enlarging the content and other video participants on the tablet screen.
• Good video and voice quality, including stereo echo cancellation, voice detection, and background noise suppression.
• Polycom Constant Clarity: provides voice and video Loss Packet Recovery (LPR), which delivers a higher-quality experience over wireless networks.
• Supports firewall traversal and VPN (virtual private network) clients so that users can  join a conference from any WiFi, 3G, or 4G network.
• Integrates with the corporate directory, allowing users to place video calls with the touch of a name (available on iPad 2 today and soon on Android devices).

The Polycom RealPresence Mobile solution is available  today. All elements of the Polycom RealPresence Platform are currently available through Polycom’s certified channel partners. For more information on RealPresence Mobile or the RealPresence Platform,  call 1-800 POLYCOM.