Polycom stand scoops Innovation Partner Award at GovTech 2012
Polycom, supported by value added distributor Kathea, took home top honours at the 7th Annual GovTech Conference, held at Durban’s International Convention Centre from 25-28 September 2012, winning the prestigious Innovation Partner Award.
The theme for this year’s GovTech was ICT Collaboration, and the award was given to the exhibitor in the Innovation category that the judges felt showcased both innovation and collaboration to its best advantage. The look and feel of the stand, its interactivity, the technology present as well as the usability thereof were all important criteria for consideration, and Polycom emerged victorious for its sleek, well designed stand which showcased the future of Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC).
“As the official sole distributor of Polycom visual communications solutions in South Africa, it was an important opportunity for us to partner with Polycom at GovTech. Working together, we positioned our joint offering including solutions that are based on open architecture and services specifically for the Government sector, showcasing the true power of UC and the benefits to this sector,” says Divesh Nathoo, pre-sales manager at Kathea.
Says Stanton Naidoo, Country Manager for Polycom South Africa, “On our stand we highlighted our open telepresence solution, the innovative OTX100, a single screen unit that delivers an immersive high definition video conferencing experience at the lowest bandwidth. We showcased the interoperability of our open standards solutions with a range of touch-screen telephony solutions that highlighted the power of open collaboration by linking natively into the Microsoft stand to demonstrate interoperability with Microsoft’s Lync collaboration tool. We also demonstrated the Eagle Eye Director technology which uses voice and facial recognition technologies which is a great add on to existing Polycom HD room systems for a more personal experience. Collaborative tools such as the Polycom UC Board, an interactive whiteboard tool which can be used on any display, and a full range of different smart mobile devices all linked in and connected to showcase our Versatility in the visual collaboration space.
All of this technology was brought together with a slick, modern design, an interactive approach and a stylish, consistent look and feel. Subject matter experts were on hand from both Polycom and Kathea, to demonstrate the power and usability of the showcase solutions. Polycom’s telepresence solution ran for the duration of the conference, for more than 14 hours each day over the public internet which was provided by Vodacom, without a single connectivity issue, highlighting the robust nature of the tools, a fact which helped them gain notice and was undoubtedly a factor in the stand receiving the Innovation Partner Award.
“Government is an area of strategic importance for Polycom, and for our distributors Kathea, as we believe that the solutions we deliver are capable of solving the complexities of converged communication and collaboration in the government using our open standards integration approach. GovTech is the ideal platform for us to showcase the Polycom/Kathea multi vendor alliance and highlight to government our best of breed solutions. We are pleased to receive this award in recognition of our innovation in the Unified Communication and Collaboration space,” Naidoo concludes.
