AT&T will OEM Polycom made equipment to market video collaboration tools for businesses by integrating their respective telepresence products. Under the agreement, enterprise users of AT&T’s Telepresence Solution in 40 nations will have access to expanded features offered by Polycom RealPresence — including on-demand virtual meeting rooms and enhanced video collaboration — as part of a managed service bundle.

AT&T will incorporate the Polycom RealPresence platform as part of the AT&T Telepresence solution video infrastructure in the AT&T Business Exchange, leading to on-demand virtual meeting room capabilities that increase customer choice through expanded interoperability, more flexible and user-friendly video collaboration experiences and new forms of collaboration with business customers, partners and suppliers on the AT&T Business Exchange.

“AT&T and Polycom’s announcement is a big win for customer choice and interoperability, and it will help accelerate video collaboration as businesses increasingly look to cloud-delivered options,” Zeus Kerravala, ZKResearch principal analyst, said. “In addition, this agreement opens new revenue streams and business opportunities for AT&T, and demonstrates the momentum Polycom is having with service providers and in the video cloud market.”

http://www.eweek.com/networking/polycom-att-partner-on-video-communications

For several years now, Cisco has increased their telepresence market penetration and will offer stiff competition for AT&T.  Cisco remains the clear market leader and now holds 50.6% of the market, which is an improvement over its 44.3% share in 1Q11 but a decrease from its 54.3% market share in 4Q11.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7060/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7060/products.html

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23507712#.UPW9hB37Kz4