Juniper and Polycom announced plans to work together to provide enterprise telepresence and video conferencing services.  Both companies are working together to integrate their respective network resource control and video call control platforms which provides dynamic signaling between them.    After Cisco finalized its acquisition plans with Tandberg in December, Polycom has formed a number of alliances with large players in the market.    The latest alliance with Juniper follows prior announcements of Polycom partnerships with IBM and Siemens Enterprise Networks. According to market data from Gartner Inc. and Frost and Sullivan, Juniper and Polycom stated that the global communication managed services market is projected to grow from $83 million to $940 million between 2008 and 2015, representing a 162% annual compound growth rate.

The companies plan to make the Juniper/Polycom integrated product available by the middle of 2010.   The integrated offering will feature a “conferencing aware” network to service providers, instead of a video/telepresence overlay to networks that are not optimized for video, the companies indicated.  Price and packaging options will be made at that time.   In the future Juniper may offer enterprises a Polycom-based video/telepresence solution via channel partners.     Although the latest announcement provides another integrated communication alternative to enterprises, some analysts feel this may not be the ultimate video/telepresence solution.   "I still think Cisco has an advantage," stated Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group, highlighting the company's market share and three-year effort on video/telepresence. "If you own [the network] end-to-end you can control the quality end-to-end -- you don't have to wait for standards to be developed, you just go do it yourself."

Related Link:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9147918/Juniper_Polycom_team_up_for_telepresence?taxonomyId=81