18 July 2009

As companies continue to rein in costs the reality they face is they still need to operate - make widgets, fix widgets or distribute them with less resources. You see regardless of business type, productivity is important and even if there are less employees and smaller travel budgets, the show must go on.

Enter technology - the major casualty of the dotcom bust - the initial cause of the last recession.

But this recession while so many market segments are truly hurting, tech has emerged as a resilient sector. And this is true in a market where some analysts believe real unemployment numbers in the US are greater than 10% already.

Polycom released earnings this week and while they were below last year they were above analyst estimates and showed the company plays in areas of tech strength. For example voice communications revenue remained flat at $69 million while the unemployment rate is just under double last year. More importantly the video products business grew 3 percent quarter-over-quarter to $161.7 million and to learn more I visited the company's New York showroom this past week.

I met with Bob Preston, VP Industry Solutions and Caroline Japic, Senior Director Corporate Communications. Preston has a team of ten who focus on vertical markets such as healthcare and education and this group has literally embed themselves in the industries they cover by becoming part of associations and even heading them up. They serve as a huge funnel where their customer contact allows them to help determine market need while feeding the company valuable success stories and case studies.

This team in fact is becoming helpful to companies that have cut travel budgets but need to continue to be productive according to Preston. He further went on to describe how HD telepresence in the offshoring market has been growing as companies need to be able to see remote circuit boards, garments and other products for approval before production begins.

In another example, the Polycom execs told me of TV shows which are shot on the east coast with a creative staff on the west coast. It is the videoconferencing technology which allows the studio to produce shows more productively.

While we were having our discussion we sat in a custom telepresence room called RPX which costs in the $200,000 range and we spoke with a remote representative in another telepresence room. In our meeting of over an hour it became difficult to distinguish the virtual from real. The technology has gotten that good.

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