The market of wireless VoIP endpoints and devices has become a unique, almost niche environment over the last few years, previously gaining traction in verticals. While ‘wired’ endpoints have become commonplace across the industry, the idea of wireless VoIP has still lagged behind in development priority. This trend is quickly changing, in part, due to the rapid adoption of SIP, and also due to Polycom's accelerated development of the SpectraLink wireless product lines that support a number of SIP platforms. It's an exciting time for the world of wireless VoIP, and Polycom is clearly leading the wireless VoIP market.
In the last few weeks, I had the excellent opportunity to discuss Polycom's SpectraLink series with Ben Guderian, VP of Product Management at Polycom (SpectraLink). While SIP interoperability is a relatively new development for the product line, the SpectraLink 8000 series, it has always been the focus of Polycom and SpectraLink to develop feature-rich functionality into an effectively portable form factor. Now, with the market focus shifting quickly from proprietary platforms to the large expanse of standards-based IP-PBXs, Polycom's SpectraLink focus is rapidly changing, too.
While much of the market stronghold still lies in traditional wired endpoints, Polycom's push towards the "wireless office" is causing a ripple-effect across the entire endpoint market. With strong support for standards-based technologies such as SIP, and obviously 802.11 wireless networks, Polycom's strategy is definitely standards-based. The opportunities for wireless SIP devices are limitless, and appeal to a much wider market than previous legacy integration products. In the past, SpectraLink handsets were deployed widely across the healthcare, manufacturing, and retail industries. Now, many additional markets, including SMBs can take advantage of the SIP interoperability with many systems, including the open-source Asterisk platform for feature-rich and cost-effective wireless telephony.
In addition to standard's based support, Polycom's SpectraLink series is also leveraging its API functionality giving users the potential to deploy custom and portable applications across the mobile endpoints. The legacy SpectraLink products included intuitive integration with market-specific applications, such as nurse call systems, and autonomous monitoring systems for manufacturing environments. Now, the future of wireless telephony at SpectraLink targets applications previously implemented at the “wired desk” endpoint, such as PIM (personal information management) and presence.
With Polycom's historic experience in developing traditional SIP endpoints, their acquisition of SpectraLink promises new and exciting products. The SpectraLink 8000 series is a great example of standards-based wireless solutions to come.
For more information, visit the Polycom SpectraLink site at:
www.polycom.com/spectralink
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