BSH Bosch And Siemens Home Appliances Group Improves Speed to Market Across Continents With Polycom Telepresence
By dissolving time and distance with Polycom and Microsoft unified communications environment, manufacturing giant battles climate change and fortifies bottom line
Johannesburg, 09 December 2010 – The world's third largest home appliances manufacturer can't afford to let thousands of miles and a dozen time zones get in the way of an efficient day's work. But thanks to a global network of room telepresence systems from Polycom, Inc. [Nasdaq: PLCM], a global leader in unified communications, BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH finds it can innovate faster, deliver sooner, and work smarter – and all while reducing its carbon footprint in the battle against climate change.
The appliances giant, also known as BSH Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group, is expanding a global unified communications environment anchored by 120 Polycom room telepresence systems that can be accessed instantly and easily through the Microsoft applications employees use every day. By linking BSH facilities in more than 40 countries throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America, the Polycom network liberates engineers, marketing professionals, sales teams and senior managers from the limitations of place, time and distance.
“Our Polycom and Microsoft unified communications environment helps ensure that we continue to deliver precisely manufactured products that set new standards for quality, performance and energy efficiency,” said Dr. Juergen Sturm, CIO at BSH. “Polycom telepresence puts people from Nanjing, Munich and Lima in the same room, and in the process reduces operating costs and carbon emissions. Polycom ensures that even our unified communications environment supports our commitment to making BSH the most competitive and sustainable appliances manufacturer in the world.”
Polycom's tight integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) has proven essential to the widespread use of the telepresence capabilities of BSH's unified communications environment. As a member of the Polycom Open Collaboration Network, Microsoft has worked closely with Polycom to integrate the power of audio, video and Web collaboration into everyday applications.
“We have been very impressed with Polycom's video quality and its easy integration into our existing infrastructure, and our conferences are getting much more efficient with the same interaction and response levels as in-person meetings,” added Sturm. “Our vision for unified communications is to enhance regular, day-to-day meetings with the in-person experience of telepresence – all without the costs, inefficiencies and climate impact that comes with in-person travel.”
Expanding use of Polycom telepresence also reflects a longstanding commitment to the environment at BSH, winner of the first German Sustainability Award. For instance, using telepresence to replace four in-person trips per year between BSH headquarters in Munich and its offices in Huntington Beach, Californiasaves tons in carbon emissions, not to mention the travel costs and hundreds of hours of work time. Multiplied by employees in 120 locations in 40 countries, the potential environmental benefits add up quickly*.
BSH's unified communications environment is underpinned by a global state-of-the-art video network that delivers high-definition (HD) video, audio and content over IP. To ensure trouble-free deployments and operation, BSH turns to Polycom Professional Services. “Responsiveness and flexibility to meet our requirements is very important to us, as well as global service coverage. We want to provide our worldwide subsidiaries with unified services everywhere,” said Anja Kuchelmeister, VC Project Manager at BSH. “We are very pleased with this long term partnership. With every interaction, Polycom demonstrates leadership and meets our expectations, even when we're working with extremely short delivery times.”
“BSH persistently wins awards for its innovative approach to answering consumer demands, and now this remarkable creativity and forward thinking is being applied to the company's unified communications strategy,” said Andrew Miller, Polycom president and CEO. “BSH integrated Polycom telepresence with popular Microsoft applications to create a seamless and entirely accessible environment that enables employees to be face to face without being in the same place. As BSH has found, Polycom telepresence delivers every day – for the bottom line, and for the environment.”
BSH's unified communications environment is fortified by the Polycom UC Intelligent Core, which enables BSH to confidently address growing demands for collaboration throughout its enterprise. Powered at BSH by the Polycom RMX 2000 conferencing infrastructure platform, the Polycom Intelligent Core serves BSH's Polycom HDX series room telepresence systems with essential features like multi-site conferencing, unified voice and video calls, automatic failover, redundancy, adaptive resource capacity, flexible network capacity, cost-effective scalability, virtualised call management, and tight integration with Microsoft and other major UC partners.
Note to editors
* Estimates from Polycom ROI calculator at:
http://www.polycom.com/products/resources/roi/en_roi_green.html#
About BSH
BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH is a corporate group operating worldwide, which posted annual sales of about 8.4 billion Euros in the year 2009. It stemmed from a joint venture set up in 1967 between Robert Bosch GmbH (Stuttgart) and Siemens AG (Munich). Today, BSH operates 42 factories in 13 countries in Europe, the USA, Latin America and Asia. Together with a global network of sales and customer service firms, the BSH family is today made up of about 60 companies in almost 40 countries, with a total workforce of some 40,000 people. BSH is the largest manufacturer of home appliances in Germany and Europe, and one of the leading companies in the sector worldwide. For further information visit: www.bsh-group.com.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. is a global leader in unified communications solutions with industry-leading telepresence, video, voice and infrastructure solutions built on open standards. Polycom powers smarter conversations, transforming lives and businesses worldwide. Please visit www.polycom.com for more information or connect with Polycom on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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