Today, Polycom, Inc. announced that they intend to acquire Sentri, Inc., a UC, cloud services and video collaboration services provider. Sentri is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner with expertise in the areas of Office365, SharePoint and Microsoft Lync technologies.
According to Polycom, a key element of the intended acquisition is the Microsoft Lync expertise of the Sentri team. This expertise will allow Polycom to offer more advanced design, consulting, deployment and maintenance services for customers’ intricate networks. In addition, Polycom plans to debut a “Services Center of Excellence” program, through which the company’s North American partners may have access to the Sentri team’s expertise. This program will feature certification and training programs and is expected to release in the second half of this year.
“Sentri provides Polycom and our partners with needed advanced services capabilities to consult, design and implement UC&C solutions, and Sentri’s expertise in providing specific Microsoft Lync services is a key skill-set as Lync adoption continues to increase,” explained Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President of Products and Services, Polycom, in a press release today. “Delivering a robust services portfolio provides Polycom and our partners with the opportunity to not only grow revenues, but also to increase the strategic value we bring to customers by serving as trusted advisors to help them solve their communications objectives as their businesses grow.”
Polycom intends to close the acquisition by the end of Q1 2013. As of today, Sentri leadership will begin reporting to Mr. Navin Mehta, Senior Vice President of Polycom Global Services and NorAm sales leaders, but will continue to service their existing customer base.
