(From left) hansjoerg wagner, polycom asia-pacific managing director and vice-president (sales), bharti teletech vice-chairman and managing director rakesh bharti mittal and sunil bhalla, senior vice-president and general manager of polycom, in new delhi on tuesday. Picture by prem singhour correspondent

New Delhi, Dec. 12: California-based Polycom Inc today formed a strategic alliance with Bharti Teletech for selling and distributing Polycom’s voice and video conferencing solutions.

Bharti Teletech aims at garnering $50 million in revenues in the next 2 to 3 years through the deal.

Polycom, the global video and voice conferencing equipment manufacturer, also plans to launch a range of India-centric voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and video conferencing products by the first quarter of 2007.

“By 2007, Polycom will launch VoIP products with features acceptable to India enterprises at penetrative prices to scale up volumes,” said Yugal Sharma, country manager, India and Saarc, Polycom.

Commenting on the alliance, Rakesh Bharti Mittal, vice-chairman and managing director of Bharti Teletech, said, “The partnership will enable Bharti Teletech to enhance its position in the voice and video conferencing market by combining our domain expertise and extensive distribution network with Polycom’s market-leading voice and video offerings.”

The partnership marks Polycom’s entry into India’s retail segment to cater to the increasing demand for voice and video conferencing products.

“By 2010, more than 50 per cent of large, medium and small companies would start using VoIP technology, of which 80 per cent plan to integrate video with voice conferencing,” said Sunil Bhalla, senior vice-president and general manager of Polycom voice communications.

Bharti Teletech will sell and distribute Polycom products through its 570 distributors and 100 institutional distributors spread across the country to reach out to a major proportion of the small and medium enterprise section as well as the newly emerging SOHO market.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has started testing a computer server software that allows corporate customers to make web-based phone calls, through its office suite of business software.