Polycom heads for the desktop

Company also adds management appliance and upgrades MCU software.

Polycom this week is set to take the wraps off a software-only desktop video client that requires no special hardware, and a management appliance to simplify customer call scheduling and distribution of software updates to endpoints.

The new products are scheduled to be unveiled at the Polycom Users' Group (PUG) meeting in Tampa, Fla., this week. Along with the new products, Polycom also is expected to announce Version 7.0 software releases for its MGC line of multipoint control units (MCU) and WebOffice collaboration suite. The MGC upgrade will feature Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) among other enhancements for multi-party calls.

Polycom's new $150 PVX endpoint runs on a PC outfitted with Windows 2000 or later, and can be used with a standard Webcam, which coupled with the cost of the software delivers an H.323 endpoint for less than half of what's available in hardware products today. It supports the newer H.264 video compression standard, Polycom's Siren14 14-KHz audio compression and the company's People+Content technology, which lets PC-based information (such as a slide presentation) be viewed with the video window. PVX is targeted at telecommuters and office workers who don't want dedicated conferencing hardware on their desks. PVX also can integrate with Cisco CallManager.

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Polycom this week is set to take the wraps off a software-only desktop video client that requires no special hardware, and a management appliance to simplify customer call scheduling and distribution of software updates to endpoints.

The new products are scheduled to be unveiled at the Polycom Users' Group (PUG) meeting in Tampa, Fla., this week. Along with the new products, Polycom also is expected to announce Version 7.0 software releases for its MGC line of multipoint control units (MCU) and WebOffice collaboration suite. The MGC upgrade will feature Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) among other enhancements for multi-party calls.

Polycom's new $150 PVX endpoint runs on a PC outfitted with Windows 2000 or later, and can be used with a standard Webcam, which coupled with the cost of the software delivers an H.323 endpoint for less than half of what's available in hardware products today. It supports the newer H.264 video compression standard, Polycom's Siren14 14-KHz audio compression and the company's People+Content technology, which lets PC-based information (such as a slide presentation) be viewed with the video window. PVX is targeted at telecommuters and office workers who don't want dedicated conferencing hardware on their desks. PVX also can integrate with Cisco CallManager.

Because the PVX is H.323 based, it suffers the same fate as traditional conferencing appliances when it comes to network address translation (NAT) and firewall traversal. H.323 uses non-standard TCP ports, which are blocked in many corporate firewalls and in the NAT implementations supported in traditional routers from vendors such as Linksys and Netgear.

However, PVX does a better job of detecting when NAT is in use and directing users how to work around the issue with their home-office broadband routers, says Ira Weinstein, senior analyst at Wainhouse Research. PVX requires a 2-GHz processor to run with a Webcam. For those with older systems, the software will work with Polycom's ViaVideo desktop unit, which has its own audio/video processing capabilities.

Alan Phillips, videoconferencing specialist for the Imperial Office of Education, is looking forward to the PVX release because it will allow him to finally implement a central address book for his users in the Imperial County School District in southeastern California. Phillips has between 250 and 300 ViaVideo's running, but is using older versions of the software because newer updates have a compatibility problem with the county's Ridgeway firewall tunneling appliance. The version of ViaVideo software currently deployed does not support central address books.