The Ministry of Defence of Spain has selected Polycom’s RealPresence platform to ensure communications with its personnel around the world.
The advanced system allows the Defence Headquarters (EMAD in Spanish) to connect with any unit of Spain’s Armed Forces (FAS in Spanish), Military Headquarters, as well as with NATO.
The Ministry of Defence selected Polycom after conducting a review of various unified communications solutions available in the market. Lieutenant Colonel R. Pérez, EMAD’s officer who worked on the technical part of the project, said: “NATO works with Polycom, and their systems are interoperable and could be integrated with other systems keeping the security spotless. For us, knowing that NATO chose Polycom was a valid reason for doing the same.”
NATO uses Polycom RealPresence Platform for unified communications and it helps them connect to their 28 member states in Europe and the Americas. “Our communications need to be secure and in addition, it is extremely important that all solutions are fully compatible with our encryption codes,” commented Pérez.
The new solutions have significantly reduced the time it takes to respond to crisis, boosted employee productivity and eliminated the need for extensive business travel as some meetings can be easily conducted over video. “Visual communication is mission critical,” stated FAS’s head of information systems and telecommunications officer. “Our ability to evaluate a situation, synchronise efforts and elaborate a plan will save several lives during emergencies. This is why we chose Polycom solutions, to deliver crystal clear communications, allowing the soldiers to focus on the crisis in hand.”
The unified communications infrastructure has been deployed to support the FAS’s personnel across land, sea and air. “Our communication needs are quite varied as we need to be able to connect, for example, to the Navy when they are at sea or the Army when they are operating in a difficult to access area. This means that we need to have robust and flexible video collaboration systems that integrate securely with all different types of connections, such as satellite, symmetrical network, IPC2 and ISDN. Polycom has become our best partner in this regard,” confirmed Lt. Col. R. Pérez.
