Polycom RealPresence doesn't command the room like it once did
July 24, 2018
Polycom RealPresence doesn't command the room like it once did
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Polycom RealPresence Immersive Video Conferencing
Presently, Polycom RealPresence is used across all sites of my organization in order to address the need for face to face meetings across multiple geographies and time zones. The intent is that the use of Polycom RealPresence reduces the amount that our organization should need to spend on travel. In addition to resolving the need for face to face meetings, it is also used for review meetings where documents and other media are shared across sites.
- Polycom RealPresence connections are done well - particularly when using a Polycom bridge. This makes it far simpler to facilitate video conferences than in the past, where you were required to know the IP address of the room you are connecting to.
- Polycom RealPresence also does a good job of making it easy to share content. In many instances, its fewer than 3 clicks to display content to remote sites.
- Polycom Real Presence also succeeds in supporting multiple platforms - I have always been able to get a client for whatever platform I'm using - Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, etc.
- Diagnosing issues with Polycom RealPresence can be very frustrating, and the tools offered within the client are unhelpful in identifying where the problem is occurring.
- Polycom RealPresence performs poorly in organizations that do not have a good amount of bandwidth out to the internet. At my company, we experience poor video resolution, skipping, dropped audio, and more.
- Polycom RealPresence does not handle scaling the interface across high resolution displays well. If you are sharing content from a 4K enabled device and the receiving end does not handle 4K, they end up with an image too big to be useful.
- Frustrated user base - issues almost every week with the systems.
- Successfully reduced travel costs - when it works. For quick one-off meetings, Polycom RealPresence makes for easy face to face communications. However, for more serious conversations, travel is preferred.
- Lack of integration into other tools. Polycom Realpresence is an entirely separate product from all of our other communications tools and does not provide an easy point of integration to hop into a video conference. As a result, using Polycom RealPresence is always a planned activity, never ad hoc.
Polycom RealPresence is really only the preferred teleconferencing solution when using a purpose built room for a scheduled face to face meeting. For ad hoc video meetings, Hangouts, Skype, and Slack all provide fewer friction points for average use cases. In fact, as Google accounts are nearly ubiquitous at this point, Hangouts has almost become the de facto standard for ad hoc video conferencing amongst our users.