Video, voice, data and web solutions integrator, Polycom, has opened a regional support centre in Canberra to assist its Asia-Pacific channel.
The centre will include technical and customer support for its conferencing and collaboration software.
Regional services director for Asia-Pacific, Dave Ertel, said Polycom chose Canberra because of the region's high level of IT skills and its capability to cover the Asian market.
It also maintains a head office in Sydney.
"The centre is helping our partners enhance their global capabilities, meet customer demands and keep equipment running in a much more reliable round the clock way," he said. "We are not competing with our channel - it is there to give our partners a more consistent and professional front-end response."
The support centre is headed up by Sydney-based regional services manager, Rick Sample, and encompasses 15 call centre and technical staff.
Ertel said he hoped to push staff numbers to 30 in the next 12 months.
Vice-president and general manager of Polycom global services, Geno Alissi, said the company also planned to expand its technical service skill set further to eventually turn the Canberra base into a 24/7 global service centre.
It will act as a hub for service depots located within other parts of the Asia-Pacific region.
"This a beginning phase that would help us start to network all of our global partners and services together," he said.
As the company expanded its product line, Ertel said he would be looking to bring on more partners.
"The convergence of VoIP and video conferencing is a place where our products are spot on the government and education market, and we want to make sure the partners we interact with contain the appropriate skills to tackle that," Ertel said.
