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Polycom has been in the news quite a bit this year. Earlier, rumors swirled that the company was in play--likely to be acquired by Siemens Enterprise Communications. In May, Andrew Miller was promoted to CEO, and he declared Polycom was not for sale, and further indicated it was looking for acquisitions itself. Polycom is expecting growth; the company is on track to hire 920 people this year.

Polycom remains independent and provides UC components (voice and video) to companies such as Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Siemens, Digium, and many more. Many of its customers compete fiercely with one another. It is probably the largest provider of SIP phones, and it is working hard to establish itself as a champion of open standards and interoperability.

Jeff Rodman is the Co-founder and CTO of Polycom. Jeff isn’t the classic CTO, in fact, "classical" might be a better description, as his other passion is the piano. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I had a the opportunity to informally chat with Jeff and it went something like this:

DM: Which do you have more of at home; pianos or Polycom devices?

JR: They both tend to breed when left unwatched; my folks have a VTX 1000 speakerphone so we can talk in HD Voice even though they don't have Internet, my brother-in-law has borrowed the Yamaha upright I bought on credit when I first graduated from college. But at home, it's about neck and neck. I use a dual-stack VVX 1500 as the "worker" desk phone, I get high quality voice and video. I slide over to the HDX 4000 HD video exec desktop when there's a serious video conference. So two there, that's a match for the two home pianos--a 1924 Chickering, a newer Steinway.

DM: Why do you think there are not very many executives in the UC space today that have "Founder" in their title?

JR: Well, "Founders" often move on after they've got a thing running, so by the time a company has grown big enough that you're looking for that business card, she or he is off founding an even newer company. You see that a lot in tech companies--just locally, my Polycom cohort, Brian Hinman, was an ex-founder of PictureTel, then went on to co-found 2Wire. UC is a space where innovation is the lifeblood, so that trend is happening even more right now. The growth of the segment is fostering a lot of startups right now, and that means a lot of "founder" re-use.

DM: Polycom was an early adopter of SIP, and when compatibility was difficult--Polycom had the benefit of creating a de facto standard. Now that the technology and competitors are maturing, how does Polycom stay relevant in SIP phones?

JR: Two things that people are most unforgiving of in their phones are poor quality and poor reliability. Polycom solved these problems. People love Polycom phones, and speakerphones, because they're transparent - they improve communications, especially with Polycom HD Voice, so that conversations can flow. Developers love our phones because we've made them a terrific place to integrate new networks, try new applications, and develop new services. Beyond that, the definition of "phone" itself continues to expand, and we're constantly evolving our offering to meet the needs of our customers. The best way to stay competitive--and more importantly, to stay valuable to your customers and partners--is to always present a moving target. That's what we do: we keep raising the bar.

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