PLEASANTON, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 06/05/08 -- In honor of UN World Environment Day and its "Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy" theme, Polycom, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLCM), the leader in collaborative communications solutions, today celebrates the success of early adopter customers who are using video conferencing and telepresence for more virtual, and fewer physical, face-to-face meetings. Recognizing travel is one of the largest sources of carbon emissions, companies of all sizes are increasingly turning to the savings in time, cost, and productivity of virtual meetings instead of travel.

Organizations such as Easynet, CoStar, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP understand that recent advances have put video conferencing and telepresence within reach of companies of all sizes. The latest HD video systems now pay for themselves the very first time three people choose to avoid one international trip and elect to use video instead.

Analysts: Green a Priority & Video/Telepresence a Key Tool for Greener Planet

Industry research groups report North America has now joined Asian, South American, European and Middle Eastern companies in looking to improve their organizations' environmental impact. IDC's "Green IT a Natural Fit for Enterprise Executives" (Doc # prUS20932407 published Oct. 31, 2007) found 50 percent of U.S. companies rate the improvement of their organization's environmental impact as either the highest or next to highest priority among senior management, while 42 percent believe it is most important or important for IT to take a leading role in making it happen.

A Gartner report entitled "Green IT: the New Industry Shockwave" by Simon Mingay, Dec. 7, 2007, predicts, "We can expect to see a flurry of climate change legislation during the next two years. Cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 25 percent by 2020 and 60 to 80 percent by 2050 are likely targets." The report goes on to state, "An obvious opportunity lies in travel substitution, using video conferencing and telepresence technologies, and using communication and collaboration tools to build an infrastructure and culture that enable and encourage remote collaboration."

"It's no wonder organizations are flocking to video and telepresence to save travel costs and the planet," said Bob Hagerty, chairman and CEO of Polycom. "It's a simple equation -- be out of the office for two days traveling to a one-hour meeting or stay local for just as effective a meeting using telepresence. All else being equal, who wouldn't choose the latter?"

Easynet Delivers Telepresence and Carbon Neutrality for BSkyB

Easynet is an international managed network and hosting company owned by British Sky Broadcasting. Easynet has rolled out managed services and Polycom HD video and telepresence systems to 45-50 global locations for BSkyB and NDS, a global leader in digital television technology owned by News Corp. The rooms are each used on average 25 hours per week. Their impact on travel and, therefore, carbon reductions has been immediate and impressive reducing costs by 41 percent in France and 49 percent in the UK in their first three months of operation.

"There were four drivers for our decision to do more business over video and telepresence," said Mike Ayers, business development director at Easynet, a BSkyB Company. "We wanted to reduce our travel spend, reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact, improve our employees' work/life balance, and improve employee productivity.
Easynet and BSkyB are now carbon neutral and News Corp, our parent company, is on track to achieve this by 2010."

CoStar: Green Communications Join Policies for Hybrid Vehicles, Green Buildings

CoStar is the number one provider of commercial real estate information/marketing solutions in the United States and United Kingdom. Its database contains details on 2.8 million commercial properties, including millions of high-resolution photos of buildings, location maps and aerial views. CoStar used video to reduce travel and coordinate expansion into Europe, to conduct research training and make presentations to prospective clients, and to enable its software developers to have a high quality, always-on link for collaboration between coasts.

"While our decision to adopt video was driven primarily by the many direct business advantages it provides, environmental considerations have long been important to the company, and are a major added benefit of using more video in our business," said Sergio Soto, video conference technician supervisor at CoStar. "It only makes sense that our communications should be just as green as our fleet of hybrid field research vehicles and our commercial property database, which includes both LEED and Energy Star property certifications, enabling our customers to compare and evaluate commercial buildings based on those two important environmental rating systems. HD video has enabled us to reduce our own air travel, an important consideration for a company with operations that are located from San Diego, CA to Bethesda, MD, to London and to Glasgow, Scotland. It even allows us to project different city backgrounds on our video system green screens, an instant location identifier as we talk over video with colleagues or clients."

Kirkland & Ellis LLP: U.S., Europe and Asia Go Green with Video

Legal firm Kirkland & Ellis uses 50 Polycom video systems and many of Polycom's iconic triangular-shaped conference phones to remotely connect six sites in the U.S. with three in Europe and one in Hong Kong. The systems enable the staff to conduct depositions, interview specialists, plan case strategies, and work collaboratively and virtually rather than travel around the world -- ensuring Kirkland and Ellis also reduce their carbon footprint. Their systems integrate with the increasing number of video systems being used by judicial and law enforcement groups who use video to cut the costs associated with transporting suspects to and from arraignments.

"The great thing about our use of video conferencing -- particularly the lifelike experience you now enjoy thanks to great HD voice and video -- is that while you are cutting costs and improving productivity, you are also environmentally responsible," said Theo Economides, audio video engineer at Kirkland & Ellis. "We are becoming the anchor tenant for a new green skyscraper in Chicago in part because of our reliance on green technologies such as video conferencing."

About Polycom

Polycom, Inc. is the worldwide leader in unified collaborative communications (UCC) that maximize the efficiency and productivity of people and organizations. Polycom delivers the broadest array of high definition telepresence video, wired and wireless voice, and content solutions so people can enjoy the best communications, whether from a real-time collaborative interaction or on-demand streamed video experience. Spanning from the desktop to the industry's only immersive telepresence suite, Polycom's high quality collaboration and communications solutions are easy to deploy and manage, as well as intuitive to use. Based on open standards, they integrate seamlessly with leading telephony and presence-based networks. With innovative market-driving technologies, a compelling vision for next generation visual communications, best-in-class products, alliance partnerships, and world-class service, Polycom is the smart choice for organizations to gain a competitive advantage with proven and trusted communication solutions. For additional information, call 800-POLYCOM or visit the Polycom web site at www.polycom.com.

Polycom and the Polycom logo are registered trademarks of Polycom in the U.S. and various countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright2008, Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved.

Polycom

Polycom

Founded in 1990, Polycom is the only company today delivering end-to-end rich media collaborative applications for voice, video, data and the web from desktop and mobile personal systems to room systems to the network core. Our vision is to enable people to connect anytime, anyplace and with any device in a virtual experience as natural as being there. In addition to being the worldwide leader in market share for best in class group and personal video systems, video and voice collaboration infrastructures and conference phones, Polycom also has the only solution for delivering Unified Collaborative Communications - the convergence of voice, video, data and web - known as The Polycom Office.

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