Patrick was joined by special guest Chris Thorson, Head of Enterprise Marketing at Polycom, which is now a Plantronics company.
Chris tells us that the background ideologies of both companies were a huge factor in the deal itself. There were so many synergies in terms of philosophy which made the move all the more appealing.
“Two companies together that share so much common history, vision and perspective on the communications industry.”
After the deal was confirmed there was still a huge amount of news in terms of new products and Chris takes us through many of the new solutions that have been released. Only recently they announced huge news relating to the consumer targeted BackBeat Go and BackBeat Fit ranges of headsets.
“This was the largest consumer announcement in our history – refreshing our entire product line there.”
When it comes to trends, Chris highlights the fact that both companies, prior to the merger, had already recognised and started to develop solutions which followed similar lines. Being able to monitor and access endpoints in the cloud could be critical for analytics of all parts within a UC network. He cites various examples of how this can be done using the latest Polycom and Plantronics solutions. All of this data can be used in combination with other systems to further enhance UC experience.
Microsoft Teams, and other collaboration tools, are also hugely important to Plantronics and Polycom, forming the next evolution within workflow.
Over the next 12 months Chris expects the vision of the two companies to become more and more aligned. This will allow the combined entity to really try and unify solutions for customers as much as possible using a modular approach.
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Presenter and Tech Journalist Patrick Watson is joined by special guest Chris Thorson of Polycom and Plantronics.
