You Simply Won’t Believe It – Introducing Avaya’s Scopia XT 3.2 Release

We’ve never been more excited about the advances in video collaboration technology from our friends at Avaya. The new, award-winningVideo Collaboration for IP Office solution is priced and designed exclusively for Avaya IP Office, introducing the SMB space to feature-rich, high-definition, seamlessly integrated video at a price that simply can’t be beat. And, with the new Radvision Scopia XT 3.2 update, the video brains at Avaya have outdone themselves once again with stellar improvements and innovations in their flagship XT Conference Room and Desktop Video Series lineup.

Here are a few of the Avaya Scopia XT Release 3.2 highlights:

• Release 3.2 supports the new Scopia XT Camera Switch for the Scopia XT5000 series to control up to 4 cameras or HD video devices from the endpoint’s remote control. And for less than $500 NPL!
• Release 3.2 also supports recording video conferences OR local presentations directly to a USB key or disk at up to full 1080p high-definition video! (Think: replacement for studio editing.)  And, what’s even better is the recorded files are saved as .mp4 format so you can play the recordings using any standard media player or upload directly to YouTube. Wow!
• Release 3.2 also includes a number of other sought-after features including support for TLS-SRTP in SIP calls, Scopia XT Advanced Camera OR a Logitech C920 USB Camera, Web Video, native Avaya Aura integration, and user interface improvements for Call Control, Meeting Management, Telepresence, and many more.

See How Polycom Video Collaboration helped Lincoln Fire and Rescue Save Lives and See a 66% Increase in Training Efficiency

Municipalities of all sizes are struggling to deliver exceptional service at a time when budgets are tight and demands on city resources have never been greater. Every morning in Lincoln, Nebraska, as many as 85 firefighters meet face-to-face to discuss the day’s operations, anticipate potential traffic delays, and share plans for training, maintenance and other business. And because they never leave their firehouses to do so, they can still reach the scene of most fires in just three minutes. In just a few months, Polycom video collaboration has become a crucial communication backbone allowing the emergency services agency to cut costs, reduce travel across town for meetings and training, cultivate a more flexible and efficient environment that improves training efficiency by 66%, and streamline the way it protects and serves the citizens of Lincoln.

Making the Case: Ten Reasons You Need to Add Video to Your Practice. Now.

Video conferences are no more disruptive than a phone call, but can be tremendously more productive. Find out the top 10 reasons you need to add video to your existing portfolio (and even to your own organization’s communication strategy) below. And, for more information about the award-winning, best-of-breed Avaya Radvision video collaboration suite, differentiators and benefits, please visit our microsite or contact your Catalyst sales representative.

1. Exponential Video Growth. NPD Group forecasts that the total number of video call users will surpass 380 million by 2015. Likewise, Frost & Sullivanreports 51% of organizations use video conferencing today and a whopping 89% of NA companies plan to use video more extensively in the next 12 months. The video market is growing and so are the opportunities for our partners, both in uncovering new prospects and increasing wallet-share with their existing base.
2. Increasing Efficiency and Speeding the Decision-Making Process.Consider this from Forrester Research: “[video] helps to put a face and mannerisms to a name and voice, enabling remote and distributed teams to feel more connected and more committed to shared goals”. When people are able to connect and collaborate more easily than ever before, it not only increases collaboration but improves workforce productivity and satisfaction as well. And as users reported in the Wainhouse Research report, the top benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency/productivity (94%), shortly followed by expedited decision making (87%).
3. Video Quality. Full HD video quality has never been more accessible, or more affordable, as it is today, on a consumer AND a business level. Having a higher resolution has made the experience far more lifelike than ever before and the leading providers are doing it at a fraction of the cost of historically clunky and pricey systems, opening high-quality video up to organizations who previously viewed it as out of reach from a financial perspective.
4. Mobile & Desktop Capabilities. According to CIO Magazine, 52% of surveyed companies plan to encourage or require employees to BYOD in the next 12 to 18 months and Time reports that 45% of the U.S. workforce now has a job that’s suitable for full-time or part-time telecommuting. Being able to access video from on the go or from your home office is becoming more of a requirement, instead of a nice-to-have, a key factor in why Gartner projects a 400% increase in dedicated video soft clients by 2016, and the mobile and desktop video market continues to grow at double-digit rates Y/Y.
5. Ease of Use. One of the biggest inhibitors of adoption for video is ease of use. The days of IT having to meticulously set up each video call in the conference room are over. Today, connecting to a video call can be as simple as a touch or a swipe and a request to join can be sent easily via eCalendar invite or email, from a mobile device, a desktop, or from the conference room. Having a video system that’s easy to use will enable users to feel more confident in the video platform, and early adopters will help facilitate the expansion of video usage throughout the organization.
6. Affordability. The bottom line is important to all businesses. By replacing travel with video, or adding video to speed decision making between teams, companies save money, free up resources, and even do their part in ‘going green’. And, with the reduction in system costs and availability of cheaper, high-grade bandwidth, the overall ‘cost per user’ continues to decrease, making a video solution more attractive to smaller and mid-market customers. It’s a bottom line win-win!
7. Integration Capabilities. The main focus in today’s market is in providing a flexible, unified solution that merges voice, video, and data and makes it accessible from any location, from any place, and from any device. In today’s integrated landscape, participants can share screens, fully collaborate, chat, and even check presence all in an integrated audio and video session. Functionality in the video collaboration space will continue to rise as will the demand for truly unified solutions from the customer level.
8. Cost Reduction. Perhaps one of the most quantifiable benefits of video is the effects video collaboration has in reducing travel costs. With HD video, you can still get that ‘in-person’ experience with a prospect, partner, or customer without having to travel, saving both time and money and freeing up your internal resources. And, other technological advances in video (compression, scalable video coding, bandwidth management, etc.) make the solution itself much more affordable overall and on a per-user basis on the backend, as well.
9. Security.  One concern for organizations when it comes to video is the security of the call, specifically the transmission of voice, video, and data during videoconference meetings. When the systems are configured properly, the threat of attack or hack (whether from the mobile system or from the mobile device) is significantly decreased. Best-of-breed systems provide the proper settings and solutions to ensure secure meetings going forward and address the security concerns for the IT group and the organization as a whole.
10.  ‘Vertical’ Possibilities Are Endless. Schools can use video to conduct distance learning sessions or other collaborative sessions with students and/or peers. First responders can view a video of the emergency on their smartphone, quickening their evaluation time upon arriving on the scene. Doctors can collaborate with specialists and even remotely care for patients. No matter what vertical, video collaboration truly opens the doors for selling smarter and deeper into your customer base and giving you the fuel to expand into verticals you might not be in currently.

7 Reasons Why Customers Choose Polycom Video Conferencing

The Fortune 100, along with 415,000+ customers, rely on Polycom to push the greatness of human collaboration forward every day. Take a look at the 7 reasons why Polycom has the best voice, video & telepresence conferencing:

1. Ease of Use- for video collaboration to become ubiquitous, systems need to be easy to use and manage.  Every aspect of the Polycom User Experience (Polycom UX) is designed with the user in mind to deliver a great collaboration experience every time.
2. Open and Interoperable- We live in a world of multi-vendor environments where interoperability is critical. In a recent global survey of nearly 5,000 enterprise users of video, 60% of respondents said they “primarily use” more than one vendor’s equipment or software to videoconference; 32% use three or more. The last thing you want is a bunch of video islands separated by unbridgeable technologies.
3. Low TCO- Polycom minimizes network consumption to be more scalable at a lower cost while providing affordable cloud-based service options for smaller organizations.
4. Investment Protection- Polycom provides the broadest support for industry standards and protocols (including H.264, H.264 High Profile, SIP, RTV, TIP, and SVC). They also provide native integration into popular UC platforms, including Microsoft, IBM, HP, Cisco, Avaya, and Siemens, for both forward- and backward-compatibility with millions of systems without expensive gateways or added network complexity.
5. Broad Range of Solutions and Delivery Options- The Polycom RealPresence Platform is intelligent infrastructure that removes the impediments to ubiquitous video by making simple-to-use, interoperable, secure video conferencing available to everyone across any network, protocol, application, or device of choice.
6. Enterprise-level Security and Carrier-grade scalability- Polycom innovations give users the scalability to accommodate any scenario while providing the highest possible quality from low-bandwidth networks.
   
7. Polycom + Ecosystem = The Complete Solution- Polycom’s partner network is an ecosystem of over 7,000 partners to integrate RealPresence voice and video solutions within their joint customers’ UC environments.

Polycom Unveils New Around-the-Table, Panoramic 1080p HD Video Collaboration Solution for Microsoft Lync

Polycom announces new Unified Conference Stations at Microsoft 2013 Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston earlier this month. The new Polycom® CX5500 and CX5100 Unified Conference Stations are designed to deliver a groundbreaking around-the-table experience for all participants, whether they’re in the room or thousands of miles away. This announcement furthers the extensive partnership between Polycom and Microsoft, building on Polycom’s industry-leading portfolio of 40 video, voice and content sharing solutions that are interoperable or optimized to work with Lync today.

The new Polycom® CX5500 delivers enterprise-grade video and audio collaboration capabilities in an easy-to-use system that can be plugged into a USB port on a laptop, and it also doubles as a SIP audio conference phone providing the industry’s best audio quality. The Polycom® CX5100 provides the same HD panoramic USB video experience for customers who don’t require standalone conference phone connectivity.

The Polycom® CX5100 Unified Conference Station is scheduled to be available worldwide in September. The Polycom® CX5500 Unified Conference Station (with SIP Telephony) is scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of 2013. For Lync users, Polycom UC Software v. 5.0 is scheduled to be available as a free upgrade in August for customers on maintenance support of VVX Business Media Phones.

ScanSource Catalyst Sponsors Avaya Beer & Gear Event

Interested in learning more about Avaya Networking gear?  Love baseball?  If so, ScanSource Catalyst and Avaya have the event for you and your customers!

On September 12^th, resellers and end users are invited to attend the Beer & Gear event in Miami, Florida.  During the morning expo, attendees will learn about the exciting updates to Avaya’s Networking portfolio centered around Shortest Path Bridging led by Avaya Director-Distinguished Engineer, Ed Koehler.  ScanSource Catalyst will also provide information around the benefits offered through the Distribution channel, specifically around the tools and programs offered through ScanSource Catalyst.  Special guest, Erick Gomez, Systems Support Manager at Miami-Dade County, will speak to the audience about plans for deploying Avaya SPB as the county’s core network.

After the morning expo, attendees are invited to continue the event at the Marlins stadium for the Miami Marlins versus the Atlanta Braves baseball game.  This will be a prime opportunity for resellers and end users to connect and network in a fun and casual environment.

Join ScanSource Catalyst and Avaya to explore the possibilities and economics that Shortest Path Bridging and IP Multicasting can bring to your business so you can reduce costs, optimize business capability, and improve customer service.  Resellers and end users are both encouraged to register with Avaya as soon as possible to take advantage of this great opportunity for networking and fun!