Unified Communications Week in Review: Cisco Exceeds Expectations; Miller Names Polycom CEO

Hailing the "strongest quarter" in company history, Cisco reported financial results for the third quarter of FY 2010 that exceeded its own expectations -- including a 63 percent increase in income for the three-month period ending May 1, 2010.

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant's highlights for the quarter included net sales of $10.4 billion, net income of $2.2 billion or $.37 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.5 billion or $0.42 per share.

"We witnessed a return to strong balanced growth across geographies, products and customer segments that we haven't seen since before the global economic challenges began," John Chambers (News - Alert), chairman and CEO of Cisco, told investors Wednesday. "We emerge from this downturn gaining market share, a larger share of the total wallet spend of our customers, dramatically improved customer relations as a trusted technology and business partner, and having next-generation products in almost every product category. It is clear that our game plan for how to handle economic downturns is hitting on all cylinders."

Telepresence (News - Alert) video and voice communications solutions provider, Polycom, Inc. has announced its new president and CEO. The Board of Directors has named Andrew Miller to this position in a move TMCnet'sErik Linask says is an effort by Polycom (News - Alert) to move to the future.

Robert Hagerty (News - Alert) will step down as CEO, president and chairman and is resigning from the Board. In serving as an advisor to Miller and the Board, Hagerty will help to ensure a smooth transition.

As part of the CEO succession, Polycom's lead independent director, David DeWalt, will assume the role of chairman of the Board of Directors. The Board will appoint Miller to the Board of Directors following this year's Annual Stockholders Meeting.

The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig Alliance ) have announced a cooperation agreement for multi-gigabit wireless networking.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is a global non-profit industry association of companies devoted to the proliferation of Wi-Fi technology across devices and market segments, while WiGig Alliance was formed to establish a global ecosystem of, high-speed and easy-to-use wireless devices.

The agreement calls on both Wi-Fi Alliance and the WiGig Alliance to share technology specifications for the development of a next-generation Wi-Fi Alliance certification program that support Wi-Fi operation in the 60 GHz frequency band.

In other news:

The collaboration between York Telecom and Savvis helps create a complete managed Cisco (News - Alert) TelePresence service. The service is built around Savvis' world-class Application Transport Services (ATS), which is designed to provide network visibility and advanced Quality of Service (QoS) controls optimized for video and voice applications. In addition to certification for Cisco TelePresence transport, ATS offers network embedded security and end-to-end management.

As a result of the Savvis-York Telecom collaboration, the industry gets a service, that can be easily deployed and integrated into most client environments. "By combining a best-in-class solution, such as Cisco TelePresence, with Savvis' world-class network, York Telecom is working to make Cisco TelePresence a service that is easily integrated, deployed and managed in most client environments," said Ron Gaboury, president of York Telecom.

Vidyo, Inc. , a company that delivers natural, multi-point videoconferences on desktop computers and room systems, released an economical scalable telemedicine videoconferencing suite called VidyoHealth. This product controls the Internet and other general IP networks for a wide array of applications likes home-health and eldercare, telepsychiatry, specialist consultations and speech therapy.

VidyoHealth lessens expenses easily and efficiently by getting rid of the need for a dedicated teleheath network infrastructure. Regardless of location, it also does this while allowing doctor-patient and doctor-doctor video communication and collaboration. This innovative product is a secure and comprehensive solution that provides telepresence-quality telemedicine application on PC and Mac desktops and laptops, medical carts, consoles and HD room systems.