[Asterisk-Users] Polycom Images

[Charlie Watts]

Greg Boehnlein wrote:
> On Thu, 5 May 2005, Charlie Watts wrote:
> 
>> Manjit Riat wrote:
>>> Out of curiosity what's the reason? Why would they not sell phones
>>> to asterisk users? Do they not trust asterisk or their phones to
>>> work with each other?
>> 
>> My guess: They don't want to compete with the folks that OEM Polycom
>> hardware. Lots of commercial phone system vendors just re-brand
>> Polycom phones, and Polycom doesn't want to hurt their relationship
>> with those businesses.
>> 
>> I bet that at some point one of the Asterisk-using Polycom vendors
>> gets the momentum to get a better Polycom<->Asterisk user
>> relationship going. The trouble is that most of the Asterisk-using
>> hardware vendors are 
>> hardware agnostic, and don't want sign anything that says "We'll only
>> sell Polycom equipment".
> 
> This is not the case. I had a long conversation with Polycom's VP of
> Product management at VON this year, and asked why they didn't want
> to support Asterisk. Their response is that Asterisk has not yet
> completed the Self-Certification program w/ Polycom, and that this
> should be a relatively easy thing to do. They recognize that they are
> missing opportunites w/ Asterisk, but they want to make sure that
> their phones work correctly with it, and that Digium will take some
> responsibility for certifying their code w/ Polycom.       
> 
> Last I heard, Polycom was supposed to be shipping a couple of cases
> of phones to Digium for certification w/ Asterisk Business Edition. 

Wonderful!