Polycom Takes Aim at Collaboration APIs

Unified Communication vendor Polycom is aiming to enable users with a new developer program and a set of RESTful APIs.

There are a lot of API use cases where there are databases where users want to pull data in as well as mobile deployment initiatives. Stuart Philips, sr. product manager at Polycom,detailed one such use case. For example, an enterprise has a hundred thousand users and they want to put their information in a conferencing control platform.

“I can now use a perl script together with APIs now to pull that data in,” Philips said.

The APIs could also be used to integrate unified communications with conference control and monitoring for enterprise policies.

Another use case that Philips detailed is integration with Google Calendar. He explained that he was working with a customer that was using Google calendar and they wanted to integrate it with Polycom UC. So what that customer ended doing is extending their calendar with the API and then creating a conferencing scheduling front end that is integrated with both the UC solution as well as Google Calendar.

“We’ve opened up the developer program so there would be a low barrier to entry for unified communications integration,” Philips said. “A lot of it is about empowering the users to make their own applications.”

Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
Polycom Enables UC Developers with New APIs

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.