Siemens Turns to Polycom for Video Conferencing

Prior to being acquired by Cisco, Siemens had been relying on Tandberg as its primary source of video conferencing systems that it sold as part of its suite of OpenScape unified communications offerings. Siemens will continue to support customers that want to deploy Tandberg video conferencing or any other video conferencing solution alongside Siemens software, but the company will now lead with Polycom video conferencing systems as its preferred partner.

Jason Macres, vice president of video solutions for Siemens, says that while Tandberg has always supported interoperability around standards such as SIP, Cisco’s intentions concerning open standards are less clear given Cisco’s use of proprietary technologies in the rest of its video conferencing portfolio.

According to Macres, customer interest in video conferencing is expanding rapidly in the wake of an economic downturn that saw severe cuts to travel budgets while at the same time witnessing a deterioration of the travel experience due to increased concerns over terrorism. Customers are also looking to increase productivity of their remaining employees by increasing the quality of the interactions between employees using video conferencing, he said.