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Polycom Transforms HomeAway to a Video Collaboration Culture to Efficiently Operate Its Vacation Rental Business Spanning More Than 640,000 Rental Pro
Posted on Monday, May 7, 2012

 

HomeAway improves productivity and efficiency with video-based collaboration for employees at 20 locations in eight countries

 

PLEASANTON, Calif. - May 07, 2012 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC), today announced that HomeAway, the world's largest online marketplace for vacation rentals, is using Polycom RealPresence video collaboration solutions to transform its culture to video collaboration, allowing employees to communicate visually, face-to-face across its many distributed business locations. The video solution includes the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform, along with video systems to connect employees and clients across various environments ranging from conference rooms to work offices to home offices to mobile or field offices. Video collaboration is allowing HomeAway to pursue its goals of faster and more effective collaboration to increase organizational productivity and reduce operating costs.

 
"We live and breathe video collaboration – it's fundamental to our culture," said David O'Rourke, senior manager, global IT, HomeAway. "We have Polycom deployed across four continents and conduct videoconferences every day. A key component of our video collaboration strategy is the use of mobile devices like the iPad 2 or the new iPad to increase the productivity of remote personnel, whether they are in their living room, on the road or in a vacation rental property. Polycom has made it all possible with secure and reliable HD video that enables our distributed team to have face-to-face conversations from anywhere. We can even show each other video of new properties in real time. Polycom's platform is breaking down time and distance barriers and helping fuel our growth by allowing our people to meet anywhere at any time."
 
When HomeAway first began using video conferencing, the company turned to common consumer services. However, the company's business has grown dramatically and HomeAway now has a customer base with listings that span more than 168 countries, offering more than 640,000 vacation rental homes across a portfolio of high-traffic websites such as HomeAway.com and VRBO.com. As HomeAway grew, the company realized it needed a more reliable, scalable, and secure video collaboration solution to bring together employees in 20 different locations worldwide.
 
HomeAway chose the Polycom RealPresence Platform due to its robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability, and security. Built on open standards, the RealPresence Platform interoperates with the industry's broadest range of communications applications. This interoperability protects customers' existing investments by ensuring backwards- and forwards-compatibility with existing, as well as new and future communication and collaboration systems. Because of Polycom's focus on interoperability, the RealPresence Platform transforms islands of employees and fragmented communications systems into a seamless video enterprise, which makes enterprise-grade video easily and securely accessible to all authorized personnel whether they're mobile, remote, or on-site.
 
HomeAway's implementation also includes Polycom® HDX® Series room telepresence systems featuring the Polycom® EagleEye Director for immersive video collaboration as well as Polycom's desktop and mobile offerings. Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile, introduced in late 2011, extends the reach of video collaboration beyond the office, enabling mobile employees to participate in group or one-on-one video meetings on the device of their choice. HomeAway is continuing to move aggressively to expand its use of video collaboration on mobile devices and expects to have more than 250 Polycom-enabled mobile devices in use by the end of 2012.
 
The HomeAway staff uses Polycom for many aspects of internal communications, from all-hands meetings to professional development. The company has found that face-to-face interaction through rich video communication is helping foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and streamlined decision making.