Poly Re-Establishes Leadership with Studio X Series Launch

by Jim Lundy

There has been a lot of change at Poly (formerly Polycom) over the last three years. Those turbulent times have come to an end under the leadership of CEO Joe Burton and his handpicked team of executives. The proof is in the pudding and today, Poly announced its new Poly Studio X Series of room-based video endpoints, optimized to work with Zoom and many other partners. This blog talks about Poly and its return to its innovative roots.

Analysis: Poly Returns to Innovation in Voice and Video

The Poly Studio X Series is a family of endpoints designed for different size conference rooms. They can support nearly any video resolution, including 4K and will work with many partners, including Zoom. Initially, the Studio X Series starts with the X30 and X50.

The new endpoints from Poly are overdue and it looks like it was worth the wait. Not only do they feature compelling industrial designs, they also offer price points that go from $1,699 (for a standalong X30) to $3,499 for an X50 bundled with the T30 Control Panel. With the new Studio X Series family of video endpoints, Poly returns to being an innovation leader, versus a follower in both voice and video.

Poly Endpoints Will Give Zoom More Ammo to Compete Against Cisco

While Poly has seen great success on endpoints with both Microsoft and RingCentral, today’s news of Zoom natively supporting the X Series gives Zoom a larger market for its Zoom Room offering. Customers were getting tired of loading software on old Macs and PCs. The Poly offering is an industrial grade design that will run Zoom Room Kit software natively.

Our take is that this will open up an even bigger round of warfare between Cisco and Zoom—where Zoom has taken share, but Cisco is fighting back with a revamped Webex and significantly improved Webex Room Kits. One note: the Cisco Webex Room Kits have been on the market for a while, while the the Poly Studio X Series will be available in North America, Europe, and select other countries starting in December 2019.

HD Voice and Meetings AI

Poly pioneered the use of high definition voice and others, such as Dolby, have marketed that as their own innovation. Poly’s new X Series family takes sound quality to the next level with auto mitigation of surrounding noise, something that Poly is known for. While Poly did not unveil all that it’s working on relative to AI, our view is that voice and video analytics will become much more strategic for users.

Bottom Line

With these moves and partnerships with most of the UCC providers, Poly has re-established itself as a go-to provider for voice and video endpoints. The aggressive pricing should convince more enterprises to digitize all of their conference rooms, something that fast-growing digital enterprises have already done.

Featured blog image of Studio X Series courtesy of Poly.