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Polycom and Juniper Partnership - What Does it Mean? Howard S. Lichtman's Thoughts and Analysis
January 25, 2010 | Howard Lichtman
Polycom and Juniper announced a partnership in telepresence and videoconferencing on Monday where they will cooperate to make carrier and large enterprise networks "application - aware" of telepresence and videoconferencing traffic. The partnership will connect Polycom's Video Control Platform (Distributed Media Application (DMA 7000) in real time with Juniper's Network Operating System (Junos) to make Juniper/Junos networks "application aware" when setting up telepresence and videoconferencing sessions and allow the network to dedicate bandwidth and resources for the call. This will allow service providers using the Juniper platform to provision converged network solutions capable of supporting the real-time requirements of telepresence and videoconferencing over a single converged pipe. You can read the complete Juniper / Polycom Press Release Here. Telepresence Options Publisher Howard Lichtman's Thoughts and Analysis
I have a number of different thoughts about this... Some technical and some on Polycom's partnership strategy in general.
1st - While I don't have exact figures I would estimate that a great many (if not the majority) of telepresence deployments are using a dedicated overlay network where a seperate network is provisioned because the client's networks (Carrier and/or WAN) can't support the real-time traffic requirements for low latency and packet loss that telepresence and videoconferencing demand to deliver crystal clear video that holds the immersive effect. Sometimes a new network is provisioned to allow the enterprise to connect with partners, vendors, and/or customers as well. The ability to run telepresence and videoconferencing over a more cost-effective converged network connection will cut the cost to deploy telepresence and videoconferencing which will continue to open up the market to more firms interested in deploying the technology.
2nd- This is a solution aimed at telecommunications carriers like BT, MASERGY, Tata, Verizon, and Virtela among others that provide managed wide area network solutions for telepresence and videoconferencing. The carriers will need to be running Juniper gear in the core and on the edge of their network to enable telepresence and videoconferencing aware flows. On the customer side sometimes the carrier will provide a managed router with their offering and sometimes customers will use their own. When I asked if the Junos solution would be compatible with Cisco routers that customers might already be using in their networks the answer was unclear.
3rd - Just because you can provide a converged network solution to an enterprise doesn't mean that the customer's Local Area Network (LAN) can support real-time telepresence and videoconferencing. Before many customers are going to be able to utilize a converged network solution they are going to have to upgrade the internal switching fabric and capacity on the LAN to support heavy video usage especially if you are talking about potentially hundreds/thousands of HD videoconferencing to the desktop sessions.
Finally - If you are fighting a giant it is helpful to have lots and lots of friends and if "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" then where is the best place to go looking for friends? Polycom is developing partnerships among companies that compete with Cisco in other areas. Juniper is a Cisco competitor in network routing and switching. Polycom has also recently announced a partnership with IBM to bring telepresence and videoconferencing to the home. (Press Release, Article). IBM is a competitor in storage, data center servers, blade servers and switches but, most interestingly, is a Cisco partner in providing managed services around Cisco TelePresence (Article, Press Release) Finally, Polycom has also recently announced a partnership with Siemens (Article) for unified communications where Siemens competes with Cisco in UC. The knife fight at the speed if light continues...
About the AuthorI have a number of different thoughts about this... Some technical and some on Polycom's partnership strategy in general.
1st - While I don't have exact figures I would estimate that a great many (if not the majority) of telepresence deployments are using a dedicated overlay network where a seperate network is provisioned because the client's networks (Carrier and/or WAN) can't support the real-time traffic requirements for low latency and packet loss that telepresence and videoconferencing demand to deliver crystal clear video that holds the immersive effect. Sometimes a new network is provisioned to allow the enterprise to connect with partners, vendors, and/or customers as well. The ability to run telepresence and videoconferencing over a more cost-effective converged network connection will cut the cost to deploy telepresence and videoconferencing which will continue to open up the market to more firms interested in deploying the technology.
2nd- This is a solution aimed at telecommunications carriers like BT, MASERGY, Tata, Verizon, and Virtela among others that provide managed wide area network solutions for telepresence and videoconferencing. The carriers will need to be running Juniper gear in the core and on the edge of their network to enable telepresence and videoconferencing aware flows. On the customer side sometimes the carrier will provide a managed router with their offering and sometimes customers will use their own. When I asked if the Junos solution would be compatible with Cisco routers that customers might already be using in their networks the answer was unclear.
3rd - Just because you can provide a converged network solution to an enterprise doesn't mean that the customer's Local Area Network (LAN) can support real-time telepresence and videoconferencing. Before many customers are going to be able to utilize a converged network solution they are going to have to upgrade the internal switching fabric and capacity on the LAN to support heavy video usage especially if you are talking about potentially hundreds/thousands of HD videoconferencing to the desktop sessions.
Finally - If you are fighting a giant it is helpful to have lots and lots of friends and if "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" then where is the best place to go looking for friends? Polycom is developing partnerships among companies that compete with Cisco in other areas. Juniper is a Cisco competitor in network routing and switching. Polycom has also recently announced a partnership with IBM to bring telepresence and videoconferencing to the home. (Press Release, Article). IBM is a competitor in storage, data center servers, blade servers and switches but, most interestingly, is a Cisco partner in providing managed services around Cisco TelePresence (Article, Press Release) Finally, Polycom has also recently announced a partnership with Siemens (Article) for unified communications where Siemens competes with Cisco in UC. The knife fight at the speed if light continues...
Howard Lichtman is the President of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy that helps organizations develop telepresence and effective visual collaboration strategies. Mr. Lichtman is the author of The Inter-Company Telepresence and Videoconferencing Handbook. The Lab provides corporate clients with acquisition consulting, RFI/RFP creation, and ROI/TCO financial modeling on telepresence systems, telepresence managed services, and inter-networking telepresence. The Lab also provides investors with prescient insight into the rapidly growing telepresence industry. Mr. Lichtman is also the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the internet covering telepresence technologies and the Editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph.
