Polycom Channel Leaders Recognized by UBM Channel's CRN Magazine as Three of 2012's 'Women of the Channel'

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open standards-based unified communications, today announced three Polycom employees, Rebecca Andrews, Deandra Cassidy and Kandyce Tripp, have been recognized by UBM Channel's CRN Magazine as “Women of the Channel” in 2012. Additionally, Kandyce Tripp has been further recognized as a 2012 “Power 100” Woman of the Channel. Honorees on CRN's 2012 “Women of the Channel” list have made a name for themselves as influential leaders within their own companies and the IT channel as a whole. The “Power 100” designation is awarded to an elite subset of CRN's annual “Women of the Channel” list holding the most prominent channel-focused positions in solution provider organizations.

Executives on the list were selected by the editors of CRN Magazine based on nominations and applications from a field of channel organizations, distributors, and solution providers. Criteria for selection was based on the role each applicant played over the past year in driving revenue for their company and the steps they've taken to evangelize the importance of the IT channel.

Kandyce Tripp, senior director of Worldwide Channel Operations at Polycom, focuses on driving compliance within Polycom channel programs, maintaining the integrity of partner facing initiatives. Her team supports business tools, processes, and systems for tracking customer opportunities and wins, and driving point-of-sale compliance. Kandyce plans to continue to develop and structure incentive and engagement programs.

Deandra Cassidy, director of Global Channel Programs at Polycom, was featured in the “Power 100” in 2011, and is being recognized as a 2012 Woman of the Channel for the second consecutive year. This year, Deandra and her team led the design of a new training and certification program that integrates sales, technical, and service competencies to help partners increase sales and improve margins through services. She is currently leading the integration of the Partner Relationship Management System to improve the process for partners to register deals, and manage and track opportunities.

Rebecca Andrews (Lian), senior partner marketing manager for Polycom North America, has been instrumental in designing and implementing an innovative co-marketing program that has delivered thousands of sales opportunities to channel partners. The program, launched last year, utilizes a framework that is the basis for joint campaign development across a number of vertical industries such as healthcare, education, government, and manufacturing. A native of Beijing, China, Rebecca hopes to leverage her recent success to implement similar channel-driven activities with Polycom teams and partners in Asia and beyond.

“Now in its 9th annual publication, CRN's 2012 ‘Women of the Channel' list honors female executives based on their accomplishments over the past year, and their dedication to driving the overall success of the IT channel,” said Kelley Damore, VP, Editorial Director, UBM Channel. “This designation is especially important because it recognizes successful and influential women in the IT channel, which has long been considered a male-centric industry. I take great pride in honoring and congratulating these women at Polycom for their contributions to the industry and their respective organizations.”

“We are proud to celebrate the accomplishments of these three talented women on our channel partner team,” said Ron Myers, Senior Vice President of Global Channels, Polycom. “Their leadership and teamwork are enabling our channel partners to better meet the needs of customers, and they have been invaluable in delivering on key Polycom initiatives such as launching the Polycom Partner Network, a global ecosystem of UC providers committed to enabling interoperability through open standards and creating an environment of ubiquitous video collaboration.”

Polycom has won numerous awards for its channel program including three consecutive wins of the CRN 5-Star Partner rating and the 2010 and 2012 CRN Channel Chief recognitions for Ron Myers.

The Polycom Partner Network is an extensive ecosystem representing more than 7000 channel and alliance partners that embrace and extend Polycom's open, standards-based video collaboration solutions. Together, Polycom and its partners deliver the most complete video collaboration solutions available to more than 400,000 Polycom customers.

Editorial coverage of the ‘Women of the Channel' will appear in the July 2012 issue of CRN Magazine. Expanded coverage and the full list will be featured online at www.CRN.com.

UBM Channel

UBM Channel is the premier provider of IT channel-focused events, media, research, consulting, and sales and marketing services. With more than 30 years of experience and engagement, UBM Channel has the unmatched channel expertise to execute integrated solutions for technology executives, managing partner recruitment, enablement and go-to-market strategy in order to accelerate technology sales. UBM Channel is a UBM company. To learn more about UBM Channel, visit us at http://www.ubmchannel.com. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ubmchannel.

UBM plc

UBM plc is a leading global business media company. We inform markets and bring the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online, in print and provide them with the information they need to do business successfully. We focus on serving professional commercial communities, from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewellery traders, from farmers to pharmacists around the world. Our 6,000 staff in more than 30 countries are organised into specialist teams that serve these communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. www.ubm.com

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in open standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions for telepresence, video, and voice powered by the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform. The RealPresence Platform interoperates with the broadest range of business, mobile, and social applications and devices. More than 400,000 organizations trust Polycom solutions to collaborate and meet face-to-face from any location for more productive and effective engagement with colleagues, partners, customers, specialists, and prospects. Polycom, together with its broad partner ecosystem, provides customers with the best total cost of ownership, interoperability, scalability, and security for video collaboration, whether on-premises, hosted, or cloud-delivered. Visit www.polycom.com or connect with Polycom on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

© 2012 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom logo, and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.