As part of the announcement, Polycom is unveiling Polycom RealPresence Cloud, a wholesale, carrier-ready offering to enable service providers to quickly bring to market VaaS offerings, said a press release.

RealPresence Cloud solutions are designed specifically for service providers to equip them with the carrier-grade infrastructure, endpoints and services they need to offer businesses of all sizes subscription-based solutions for video collaboration.

The new offering for service providers is designed to accelerate the penetration and adoption of Polycom video collaboration solutions among SMBs/SMEs (small to medium sized businesses) and enterprises who want either a hybrid solution of both premises-based video collaboration solutions and video on demand, or a pure VaaS solution.

Polycom RealPresence Cloud solutions compress the time-to-market and time-to-revenue for service providers to deliver VaaS solutions. Powered by the Polycom RealPresence Platform, the most complete and inter-operable solution for universal video collaboration, RealPresence Cloud provides the carrier-grade scalability, reliability, availability and security required for service providers to offer VaaS to SMBs and enterprises.

RealPresence Cloud solutions encompass a fully managed multipoint video service that supports a multitude of connectivity options between standards-based room, mobile, PC and Web-based endpoints, as well as Microsoft Lync 2010, IBM Sametime and endpoints supporting the non-standard TIP protocol. Service providers can leverage Polycom RealPresence Cloud solutions to offer their customers a true business-to-business VaaS solution without having to fully integrate and support the core infrastructure on-premises.

This solution leverages the Polycom RealPresence Network to allow service providers to fast-track their capability to deliver video from the cloud.

“Polycom RealPresence Cloud is a key component to our vision of making video collaboration ubiquitous. Service providers are critical partners to drive video collaboration growth through VaaS offerings, which will dramatically lower the up-front investment for SMBs and enterprises, enabling them to reap the benefits of video collaboration,” said Andy Miller, President and CEO, Polycom.