Polycom’s video solutions, along with their tailored education programmes and content, enable richer learning experiences. Currently, many municipal schools and prestigious institutes in India have associated with Polycom, said Ankur Goel, in conversation with Kartik Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN).
Can you elaborate on Polycom’s work with the government sector?
The government business is doing very well for Polycom. Government organisations in the country are using Polycom voice, video, and multimedia solutions to increase citizen engagement, improve outreach to remote citizens and connect face-to-face with businesses, and promote local trade.
Our solutions are enabling governmental bodies to:
- Collaborate on citizen services, emergency management, justice services, and national security to improve public services.
- Increase departmental efficiency and responsiveness, and promote inter-agency collaboration.
- Increase access, equity and quality of citizen and human services in urban and rural areas.
- Improve emergency management in times of crisis ensuring rapid response, recovery and reconstruction. Enhance justice services resulting in reduction of security risks and pending cases while improving inmate services and re-entry.
- Strengthen national security and defense through optimum readiness and situational awareness.
- Reduce costs and carbon emissions contributing to compliance with budgetary and environmental mandates.
We have powered many State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and police departments in the country with our collaboration solutions. Additionally, we are also playing a huge part in the government’s ‘Skill India’ initiative – our interactive classrooms are enabling richer learning experiences for students in rural India.
How is Polycom’s business in the education sector growing?
Education today faces major changes because technology and globalisation have transformed the landscape. Educational institutions must develop students as global citizens, meet organisational imperatives to operate more efficiently and attract talented students and faculty from throughout the world.
There is also a growing reliance on online or hybrid learning – the increased use of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops has led students to expect anywhere, anytime learning.
As part of the classroom of the future, educators are looking for voice, video, and content collaboration that aligns with the current digital world and global economy. Polycom’s video solutions, along with our tailored education programmes and content, enable richer learning experiences.
Currently, many municipal schools and prestigious institutes in India have been associated with Polycom. For example, XLRI – Xavier School of Management, one of the country’s best ranked and oldest business schools uses Polycom.
We offer various applications and initiatives for schools and universities to enable them to redefine their workflows through the power of collaborative technology. Our most advanced solutions are helping solve many of the challenges that the education sector is currently facing.
How is Polycom contributing in the Smart Cities initiative of the central government?
At present, the smart cities initiative is still in its early stage. When smart cities move to the execution phase and starts to deliver citizen services, Polycom will play a big role.
How do you differentiate yourself from competitors? What is your market share and how do you see your company’s growth?
Polycom is a market leader in the collaboration space. Our solutions help companies unleash the power of human collaboration across any distance, device, or timeline to save costs and drive topline revenue growth.
As a part of our strategy, we have shifted our focus to improve customer experience from our earlier device based approach.
One of our biggest differentiators is our focus on interoperability and integration.
At Polycom, we believe interoperability with other communications solutions in the market is critical for our customers. We go beyond interoperability and have deep integration with key partners, like Microsoft. This provides investment protection for our customers and does not put them in a position of having to rip and replace like other competitors require.
We also have features such as acoustic bubble and noise block which differentiates us – Acoustic bubble technology basically makes ‘anywhere collaboration’ a reality by eliminating unwanted noise; Noise block keeps annoying sounds such as keyboard clicking and paper rustling from interrupting the continuity of meetings.
What are your upcoming plans?
The Indian market is evolving in many ways – transitioning from small towns to new cities, emergence of new start-ups, and large growth of Small Medium Businesses. There is increasing opportunities in tier 2 and tier 3 cities as companies in these regions explore newer geographies to create substantial impact for their services or products, there has been an increased need to remain constantly in touch with the sales force and get real-time information from them. This has accelerated demand for collaboration-based tools. The government, healthcare and education sector presents tremendous opportunities for us and we will work on leveraging this to drive our business.