Polycom, the world's leading provider of unified collaborative communications solutions announced integration with IBM Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes, delivering on intentions that were made public in January at Lotusphere. The Polycom Unified Collaboration for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes enables enterprise users to launch high quality point-to-point and multi-point voice, video or combined voice and video conferences directly from Lotus Sametime and IBM Lotus Notes. In addition, what’s really new is that Polycom signed an agreement under which IBM Global Technology Services will resell and integrate Polycom solutions.

Lotus Sametime users can associate different devices with their Lotus Sametime profile (desktop phone, mobile phone, desktop video application, video conferencing system, etc.) and then simply choose which device they want use when joining a meeting. People using different types of devices are joined seamlessly in a meeting through the unified conferencing capabilities of the Polycom infrastructure. For example, a user may receive an IM prompt inviting them to join a video call with a co-worker.

That user can choose to join the call using their desktop video application, or send the call to a video system in a nearby conference room, or join the call using their desktop, mobile or conference phone. This can also be used as a "find me" feature allowing users to direct incoming calls to a mobile phone when traveling or to an alternate phone or video endpoint when working from home or a remote office.

The Polycom software architecture for the IBM Lotus world is based on a new application server dubbed RAS 200I (the "I" stands for IBM and separates it from the 200A - Alcatel). The RAS200I is a back-to-back SIP agent as well as an application server. The MSRP for this device is $8K in a configuration supporting 50 simultaneous calls (3000 registrants). While the IBM integration software is clearly intended to support Polycom’s room video systems, the first release does not support the HDX line; it does support VSX, PVX, and RMX.