Polycom on the desktop
By Jason Meserve, NetworkWorld.com, 10/12/04
The big news of the week comes from Polycom, which has finally rolled out its not-so-secret software-only H.323 PVX endpoint as part of a slew of announcements made at the Polycom Users Group meeting in Tampa. If you've got a 2GhZ PC, a Webcam and broadband, you can run an H.323 call. Granted, going over the public Internet is not the most reliable way to make a video call, but should work relatively well for 256K video. PVX supports People+Content and H.264 video, which will help save on the bandwidth. And it is only $150.
While VCON already ships software-only endpoints (vPoint on the desk and HD4000 for group systems), Polycom joining the fray is momentous since it has the marketing dollars to really make this fly. For corporate users that want to video enable telecommuters, this is the easiest option. It still runs into issues with firewalls and NAT, though the latter can be easily worked around using simple port forwarding available on any home broadband router. Using a VPN can also make the intraoffice communication simpler and avoid the pesky firewall/NAT problems.
PVX is not the only new Polycom is making. For a roundup, read my news story from this week's issue of Network World.
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