Polycom acquires ViVu, looks to expand into broader video-conferencing market

Telepresence vendor Polycom (Nacdaq: PLCM) today announced it has acquired low-cost videoconferencing and video collaboration company ViVu. Terms of the cash deal, which closed Friday, for the privately held startup were not released. Polycom expects the transaction to be neutral to earnings.

ViVu is one of a number of vendors offering a scalable cloud-based architecture and enterprise-class secure platforms, without any proprietary hardware. ViVu's video collaboration software can be embedded into web applications such as enterprise, social and vertical industry applications to enable instant web-based HD video collaboration. The company, which offers a monthly service for under $10, in September rolled out its own app for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPad 2 and iPhone 4. The iOS component means the videoconferencing product now is available on PCs, Macs, Android devices and iOS devices, without requiring any proprietary hardware.

The company was founded in 2008 and employs about 25 people. Clients include TIBCO and Thomson Reuters.

ViVu gives Polycom a fast-track to embed HD video into web-based applications through an OEM model, accelerating time-to-market and adoption of Polycom HD video collaboration solutions, while driving awareness of the Polycom brand powering video collaboration inside a wide range of applications.

Polycom said its goal with the acquisition is to "make it possible for millions of people to use video collaboration as their preferred method of communication--easily, reliably and securely--regardless of network, carrier, protocol, application or device."

The acquisition is expected to be a key enabler for Polycom to continue to provide customers with the highest quality, scalable video collaboration. Polycom said it will leverage ViVu technology in its RealPresence Platform.

"ViVu is a compelling acquisition for Polycom as their technology provides a scalable architecture to quickly deploy rich video collaboration for a range of web-based applications for social, business and industry-specific applications, such as those for healthcare, finance and customer service," said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom's executive vice president and general manager of UC solutions and chief development officer.

ViVu software applications are potentially wide-ranging and include customer service, telemedicine and financial services.

ViVu video collaboration software technology is already embedded into a number of enterprise applications. A couple of examples include TIBCO, where ViVu powers the HD video collaboration in TIBCO's enterprise social platform tibbr, enabling users to collaborate in real-time, and Thomson Reuters, where it powers the video collaboration inside Thomson Reuters' financial content application, helping financial professionals collaborate to view and discuss the latest news.

The acquisition of ViVu gives Polycom innovative and scalable software technology for web-based applications--as well as first-mover advantage--to deliver HD video collaboration for social media and vertical market applications.

For more:
- see this release

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