Polycom RealPresence Mobile Brings Video to iPads, Android

In May 2011 we wrote about Polycom’s partnership with Motorola to offer its video collaboration software on the Xoom tablet. Now the company is expanding its tablet base and has put a name to the offering: Polycom RealPresence Mobile.

“This is a continuation of our software strategy around bringing solutions to market in area of mobile,” said Jim Kruger, senior vice president, Global Solutions Marketing at Polycom. “Out goal is to enable mobility in the marketplace and tablets in the workplace, and this is a great platform for Polycom to extend video applications beyond the corporate walls.”

RealPresence Mobile provides Polycom users to ability to participate in and even moderate high-definition video calls using a tablet device, be it an iPad or Android, regardless of whether the conference is one-on-one or multipoint. The platform views the tablet simply as another endpoint and makes the connection, Kruger said.

“We recognize there are multiple applications that are similar and we look at ours as a true enterprise solution, enabling the IT manager to effectively provision, manage and set up on the network,” he said. The solution supports firewall traversal and VPN clients so users can join a conference from any Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G network.

RealPresence Mobile also includes touch-control interface to provide users with features such as the ability to simultaneously view content shared from other participants and toggle back/forth between enlarging the content and other video participants on the tablet screen.

RealPresence Mobile for the iPad is now available as a free app download from the Apple App Store, while Android tablet users can find it at Android Market.

“As companies deploy mobility in their enterprise, this will definitely pull more infrastructure, which represents a huge opportunity for resellers,” Kruger said. “This, in effect, creates a whole network effect of connectivity.”