Polycom VVX and Alcatel-Lucent: New Partnership

Earlier this month, Polycom and Alcatel-Lucent – one of the world’s major network equipment vendors – announced that the Polycom VVX business media phones are interoperable with, and available on, Alcatel-Lucent’s Rapport for Enterprise. Rapport for Enterprise is a software-based platform designed to provide service providers and enterprises with flexible communications and collaboration services.

Polycom says that Rapport is designed around providing a single open communications frame in a private cloud. The addition of Polycom VVX , according to Polycom, adds media phones capable of providing desktop voice and video for organizations of all sizes.

Enterprise IT and telecom departments must run network equipment for huge corporate centers, of course. But, at the same time, they must support systems that, technically, are similar or the same as those used by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and even sole practitioners.

For instance, there are small local offices of big accounting firms all over the country. There also are rural health center that are owned by a nationwide hospital chain. The second reality is that people increasingly work on the go. The reality is that as much gets done in hotels, coffee shops, trains and other places as in the office. 

Any overall communications solutions must either enfranchise these work arrangements or be able to interact seamlessly with platforms that do. IT executives and corporate planners must take into account the totality of the enterprise’s needs, not just what happens in the large offices.