At the GENBAND user conference in Orlando, GENBAND Perspectives 2016, the company has announced it has met the US Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certification requirements. The announcement covers both the GENBAND Application Server and the Polycom VVX voice and video portfolio.
According to Patrick Joggerst, Executive Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing at GENBAND: “Polycom has been a longstanding strategic GENBAND partner. Strengthening our relationship with a combined JITC certified offering significantly enhances our ability to provide the Department of Defense and other government agencies with secure, market-proven solutions – delivering the support they need today and a roadmap for future innovation. With JITC certification we’re making it more cost-effective for departments and agencies to migrate to next generation technology that supports their strategic initiatives while making their work environments more collaborative, engaging and productive.”
An opportunity to pick up lucrative government contracts
The timing of this announcement is good news for both GENBAND and Polycom. The US is looking to replace its existing legacy solutions and it is likely that any new deal will last for several years. Previous generations of technology have been proprietary which has increased costs. With support for international standards GENBAND and Polycom will be looking to demonstrate cost savings and deliver interoperability between communications systems used by the US and its allies around the world,
One of the keys for the JITC team that led to them selecting the GENBAND Application Server was the ability to deliver SIP support within the demands of a military deployment. This is not just about security and encryption but also resiliency allowing networks to work around any outages and not be dependent on a single communications location.
GENBAND will also be hoping to pick up a slice of the cloud spend that the US military and government departments and now making. It claims that the GENBAND Application Server is able to scale to support up to 2 million users. It will be interesting to see how quickly it announces business wins in this area which is dominated by the big IT vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Conclusion
This is a good new announcement to kick off the conference week and there will be more to follow. Breaking into the lucrative US military and government communications market will also give GENBAND and Polycom an opportunity to increase their overseas sales.
