Polycom Adds Professional Services to UC Portfolio
Conferencing vendor Polycom is giving its partners another way to turn a profit in the burgeoning unified communications space through its new Professional Services portfolio. The slate of offerings will be available to Polycom customers through Open Collaboration Network partners and certified Polycom partners, as well as Polycom Global Services, which can work with partners to deliver an end-to-end services solution.
“The idea behind the professional services is to help our ecosystem of partners to become more profitable,” said Maurizio Capuzzo, vice president Global Channel Marketing at Polycom. “We want to offer all the possibilities for partners to take advantage of this Professional Services offering.”
The company is kicking off the new services offering with an integration service for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2, integrating presence-based real-time IM, voice, video and data.
“When you look at what we’re doing with partners, these professional services will be fulfilling a major component to ensure solutions are implemented properly from the start,” said Jeff Connolly, director of Professional Services Business Development at Polycom.
The company also plans to offer professional services solutions for its other vendor partners including Avaya, BroadSoft, HP, IBM, Juniper, Microsoft and Siemens, giving its reseller partners an even broader palette to work from.
To be able to offer Polycom’s Professional Services for Microsoft, a company must be Polycom reseller and achieve UC certification, Connolly said. In addition, the company must have project managers on staff to handle the complex integration, and must send at least two MCSE-certified technicians to a five-day infrastructure implementation course. Once they have completed that course, the technicians then must attend a UC platform integration class.
“This program is designed to enable the partner to have the competency to be able to deliver and integrate the solutions so we ensure customer satisfaction,” Connolly said.
The value of properly integrated solutions is priceless. Mess up an installation and resellers run the risk of losing a customer. As unified communications moves into the realm of must-have business technology, Polycom is helping its partners be prepared.
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