With the video marketplace heating up, there's a major change at Polycom, which has become the hottest company in the marketplace in the wake of Tandberg's acquisition by Cisco. Today, Polycom announced that its EVP of Global Field Operations, Andrew Miller, was taking over as Polycom CEO. Miller is former CEO at Tandberg, and is also a veteran of Cisco, the new owner of Tandberg.So what does this mean for the fierce competition at the top of the video market? Obviously, it's noteworthy that Miller has a background at Tandberg and Cisco, and thus should understand as much as anyone Polycom could have hired, how to compete against them. Further, the fact that Miller headed Polycom's Field Operations unit before being promoted suggests that Polycom sees its go-to-market strategy as a key element in the fight.
Indeed, that point about go-to-market is emphasized in this interview that Miller did with Wainhouse Research just over a month ago. There's certainly no better expert to quiz a top videconferencing exec than Andrew Davis at Wainhouse. Andrew Davis asked Andrew Miller, "Does the Cisco-Tandberg deal keep you up at night?"
As you know, I worked at both Cisco and Tandberg, so I have a good perspective of their place as well as our own in the industry. We have tremendous momentum right now with the Polycom Open Collaboration Network and our strategic partners, and, in fact, we partner with Cisco in various areas of our business, as well. That said, I always operate with what I like to call a healthy paranoia. As such, I was very pleased to see that the European Commission approved the deal under the condition that Cisco turn over its proprietary Telepresence Interoperability Protocol to an independent industry body to ensure interoperability with Cisco's solutions and allow other vendors to participate in development and updates. At Polycom, we feel this ruling was very important because Cisco's approach could have fragmented the market and pushed customers into a locked-in solution without choice or investment protection. I applaud the DOJ and European Commission for supporting open standards in the telepresence and video solutions industry. And I am very pleased to see that Cisco will work with the rest of the industry to ensure customers are not locked in to a proprietary solution.
Again, you can find the whole Wainhouse interview with Andrew Miller here.
