Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), coming off strong earnings for the fourth quarter, is reshuffling its executive ranks, adding five North America based sales execs to help it push its video collaboration solutions to an increasingly competitive– and crowded– market.

Four of the five will be designated area vice presidents, including Greg Prindle, AVP of the Enterprise East region; Peter Elmgren, AVP of Enterprise West; Joe Vranicar, AVP of Enterprise Central; and Dean Ash, AVP of Enterprise South. They’ll work to develop go-to-market plans and work with Polycom’s alliance, service provider, and VAR partners, focusing on growing Polycom’s enterprise presence.

The fifth exec, Ashan Willy, was named VP of Worldwide Systems Engineering. Willy will lead the System Engineering team globally and will report to Tracey Newell, Polycom’s executive vice president of Global Sales.

“With today’s appointments, we are refining the alignment of our organization, expertise, and sales motion around the needs of enterprises, to capture more opportunities and drive the network effect of video through traditional on-premises delivery, as well as new delivery platforms such as mobile and social,” said Newell.

Prindle comes to Polycom from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), where he headed the TRI-State Commercial Operation. He joined Cisco as an account manager in 1998.

Elmgren joined Polycom late in 2011 after spending the previous five years with Intel, where he held several executive sales and general management positions, most recently as the managing director of worldwide sales and operations within Intel’s Software and Services Group. He’s also been at AT&T (NYSE: T), Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya.

Vranicar last was at Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) , where he was director of Sales for HP Networking in the central region. He’s also been at Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) and EMC, along with seven years at Cisco.

Ash also is a Cisco alum, and he also has been at Amdahl and IBM. Ash most recently was director of Sales in Cisco’s Service Provider segment.

Willy was vice president of Systems Engineering for the worldwide commercial business at Juniper, where he was responsible for building the commercial market for Juniper worldwide, including go-to-market enterprise strategies. Prior to Juniper, he was at Cisco, Bell Sygma and ACC.

For more:
– see this release

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A strong fourth quarter by Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) has resulted in Citygroup increasing its earnings forecast for the company, and several other companies bumping the stock’s target price. Citygroup upped its target to $24. FBN Securities earlier this week moved to $25, and analysts at Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target from $25 to $29.

The company this week reported a 50 percent increase in its fourth quarter profit to $49.6 million, or 28 cents a share, up from $33.1 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of 29 cents a share. Revenue was $407 million, up 20 percent from $340 million a year ago.

The company saw sales in the Americas, its biggest market, grow by a modest 7 percent; in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, sales were up 28 percent year-over-year; and the company saw a big bump, 42 percent, in APAC.

CEO Andrew Miller cited the company’s software-based RealPresence Platform and “broad geographic growth” as drivers for the quarter.

“We experienced unprecedented demand for our secure, interoperable, unified collaboration solutions by both enterprise and service provider customers,” he said. “Polycom’s cloud, mobility, and software-driven infrastructure strategy is beginning to yield and we look forward to another year of solid growth in 2012.”

Polycom has been gearing up for battle with its top competitor, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), expanding its push into the mobile video conferencing space, campaigning for better interoperability, and hiring Cisco executives. It also bought Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)’s videoconferencing business last year, adding more depth to its pricier telepresence offerings.

For more:
– see this release
– see this article

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
Polycom teams with Lenovo to extend RealPresence video collaboration
Polycom rolls out wholesale, carrier-ready video-as-a-service
Polycom integrates RealPresence into IBM’s Sametime, Connections
Polycom takes another step to drive video-conferencing interoperability
Polycom acquires ViVu, looks to expand into broader video-conferencing market

AT&T (NYSE: T) is jumping into the unified communications space with both (big) feet, today announcing AT&T Unified Communications Services, delivering a carrier-grade solution aimed at businesses of all sizes. The telco is the latest in a string of service providers to try to leverage their cloud offerings across the unified communications segment.

The telco said its cloud-based UC offering would help organizations control costs and eliminate unpredictable expenditures. The services will be available across virtually any device, as are other AT&T cloud-based services, and will allow users to, for example, seamlessly switch from an IM chat to a phone call to a web or video conference.

AT&T said the new service enables a business to leverage its existing investments to improve collaboration and also provides an easy transition “from where a customer is today to where they want to be tomorrow without incurring significant capital expenses.”

AT&T said the offering consists of two parts. AT&T Unified Communications Central integrates IM/chat, email, VoIP calling, web/audio and videoconferencing, voicemail, unified messaging and mobility with presence, behind a single user interface designed for both PC and mobile usage. AT&T Unified Communications Voice provides IP Telephony from the AT&T cloud and can be used both as a stand-alone service or integrated with AT&T UC Central.

AT&T says it will leverage the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution platform as the core of this service.

For more:
– see this release

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Analyst: Mobile VoIP ripe for the picking

With Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)’s iPad continuing to see aggressive adoption by enterprises, it has been no surprise to see UC vendors scramble to get their platforms connected to the device. Add Avaya as the latest entry.

The company has rolled out a secure, next-gen unified communications solution for use on the iPad.

Avaya’s Flare Communicator for iPad tablets, which works over either Wi-Fi or 3G networks, extends the Flare Experience currently delivered on the Avaya Desktop Video Device, to include the popular tablet. The free app is currently available for download in Apple’s App Store, and Avaya promises it will be rolling out apps for other mobile devices later in 2012.

With the new app, users will be able to view the availability of enterprise associates from the contacts card, launch an instant message, voice call or email with a single tap. It also enables users to manage two simultaneous voice calls while mobile, multi-task on the iPad and access and add contacts to a corporate directory.

Customers with Avaya Aura 6.1 or later can add up to 50 Avaya Aura client access licenses at no cost to connect users to Flare Communicator during an introductory offer through April 30.

Pew Research Center this week said tablet ownership in the U.S. had grown by some 19 percent over the past several weeks, nearly doubling from 10 percent just prior to Christmas. In the September quarter, Apple sold 11.2 million tablets and indications are that Apple will report some 13 million sold last quarter.

Avaya earlier this month introduced a mobile UC app for the Android OS that enables enterprises to use Avaya’s IP Office 8.0, including the ability to invite, view, mute and drop participants during a conference call.

The app lets users display their availability and show specific times of availability based on a user’s Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Outlook calendar. The app also includes instant messaging, a geopresence display that lets users display their location and visual voicemail.

One-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office builds on Avaya’s existing Essential Mobility solution for IP Office, which extends voice capabilities such as one number access and call control.

For more:
– see this release

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Businesses communicate in a lot of ways and, increasingly, are turning to an array of videoconferencing tools as the technology becomes easier to use and more ubiquitous. It provides an upfront, cost-effective opportunity for virtual face-to-face meetings.

The technology is blossoming; Nearly every week, a news release comes in about the latest service to launch, interoperability deal reached or about a new product rolling out targeting the SME and SMB markets, not to mention the near daily releases that pop up with the newest consumer offering.

The technology has, like a YouTube video, seemingly gone viral. Its mobility, its ease of use has begun to make it so commonplace that it’s increasingly become just another app or program that users click to use and forget about.

In fact, ABI Research senior analyst Subha Rama said in a webcast last week that the technology, which has been gathering steam, was likely to explode once LTE becomes widely available, especially with so many more dual camera devices coming to market.

“When the technology integrates with a popular mobile device the issue resolves almost instantly,” said Rama during a Webcast on Thursday.

But there’s some new concerns about videoconferencing and security that are bound to rattle some cages in the coming week, and they’re extreme enough that they could potentially cause adoption to stutter until they’re resolved.

In a New York Times story today, a security officer for Rapid 7, told of how he created a computer program that, in two hours, discovered 5,000 open videoconference systems that were outside the firewall of their companies and that were configured to automatically answer calls.

The companies included law firms, venture capital companies, pharmaceutical firms, universities and medical centers.

Moore said he was able to call into systems made by Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI)’s LifeSize, Sony and others. Polycom, the Times said, ships all of its platforms with the auto-answer feature enabled by default (which can easily be changed by users, Polycom told the Times).

“It boils down to whether organizations are aware of the risk, and our research indicates that many, even well-heeled venture capital firms, were not aware and do not implement even the most basic of security measures,” he said.

Mike Tuchen, CEO of Rapid 7, warned that companies simply have dropped the ball on videoconferencing security, especially as videoconferencing’s popularity has grown.

“The entry bar has fallen to the floor. These are literally some of the world’s most important boardrooms–this is where their most critical meetings take place–and there could be silent attendees in all of them,” he said, sounding an ominous tone.

“Any reasonably computer literate 6-year-old can try this at home.”

How secure is videoconferencing? Is the rapid expansion of the technology putting sensitive business information at risk? And, does the surge of new, less expensive videoconferencing solutions open the door to hackers even wider?

Love to hear your thoughts.–Jim