In 2012, Polycom introduced the new Group series rooms sytems, consisting of the Group 300, 500 and 700. These new systems joined the Polycom room lineup consisting of the HDx7000, 8000 and 9000. You may be wondering what the differences are between the two series, and when to sell one vs the other. Here is Polycom’s description of both:
HDx series
•A great investment in a reliable, proven platform.
Group series
•Next-generation platform with strong advancements in performance and user experience.
Still not clear? Same here. Let’s break it down.
Common Features
- High quality video and audio conferencing
- People + content
- H.264 high profile (higher res @ lower bandwidth)
Unique to HDx Series
- Allows ISDN or POTS endpoint connection
- Lync 2010 (wave 14) qualified
- Compatible with MS Outlook 2010
- People ON content (weatherman-style keying over content)
- Mode provisioning from CMA
Unique to Group Series
- Built-in MCU option
- MS 2013
- MS Lync Wave 15
- 1080P People + content
- SVC
- Digital AV I/O
- XML API
- HTML5 server
- Tandberg/Cisco Multiway, RCDO, AAC-LD, OBTP, TMS
- SP SIP provisioning
- H.265
Your Choice
Which will you choose? Polycom provides guidance by stating the following as situations that would call for the new Group series: “Do you need a low cost, small room solution, SVC, or are you a new greenfield installation?”. Most telling phrase includes “greenfield”, which refers to a new client or install, without legacy HDx product to match up with. This suggests that going forward most, if not all specifications will be Group series.
Here are the three groups, which start at about $3k list price:
They roughly correspond to the HDx series, especially if you equip the 300 series with a full Eagle Eye camera. They are priced slightly higher than their HDx cousins, but offer more features, better GUI, and an optional 4HD or 8SD MCU, which is a bargain for those who have a few endpoints and don’t want to invest in large bridging hardware.
“Dave”, you are asking, “that’s a lot of fancy talk, but I’m still not clear on who I sell HDx to now”. Ok, here is your HDx customer:
- Customer has lots of HDx and older Polycom equipment, or owns older Polycom CMA
- Customer is military or government (more likely to need connectivity to POTS or ISDN, or other federal VC certifications).
- Customer uses Outlook or Lync 2010, not likely to upgrade anytime soon
That’s it. Otherwise, Group!
Note that there are other things that Polycom is bringing into this environment that are worth noting. From my previous post, here are three:
Polycom UX: 20 new features, like a new common UI across all devices and 1080p60 support. Very cool: SmartPairing, allows automatic pairing of pads phones and laptops without the usual VBP (border proxy) cha-cha.
Polycom RealPresence Collaboration Server 800s, Virtual Edition: The name is a mouthful, just means cloud MCU. They are giving source code to anyone who wants it.
Polycom RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite: A cloud-based bridging solution, designed to allow Polycom users to connect with users of commercial social apps (Skype, Facebook, Gtalk, etc.) and other business apps via a browser window.
For more on that, go to this post:
Can you please send us a quotation for the above, RealPresence Group 500 x 1