Johannesburg, 22 Apr 2013
Plantronics (NYSE: PLT) announced that Frost & Sullivan has awarded the company a Visionary Innovation Award in recognition of the company's accomplishments in the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and customer care markets.
Frost & Sullivan defines Visionary Innovation as the ability to identify key mega-trends and proactively address unmet needs with disruptive solutions that can greatly improve business performance as well as individuals' work and personal lives.
"Plantronics has been at the forefront of headset innovation since its inception. It has successfully aligned its product development roadmap with a number of mega-trends and is highly deserving of Frost & Sullivan's 2013 Visionary Innovation Leadership Award," said Elka Popova, Director, Unified Communication & Collaboration, Frost & Sullivan. "Key to Plantronics' success is its focus on software development and contextually-aware communications that enable its devices to react based on the user's status, availability, location, and other contextual factors."
"This award validates our impact on unified communications and the importance of delivering products that are easy for people to use," said Ken Kannappan, president and CEO of Plantronics. "We appreciate the recognition of the contributions we have made delivering exceptional audio and playing a critical role in improving productivity."
Mega-trend: connectivity and convergence
Frost & Sullivan predicts that by 2020, there will be 10 connected devices for every household, five connected devices for every person, five billion Internet users, and 500 devices with unique digital IDs per square kilometre.
Connected individuals must clearly hear each other to communicate effectively, with minimal interference and disruption to themselves and to others, regardless of their external environments. Individuals are increasingly using multiple communications and collaboration tools. They are frequently switching between communications modes and, therefore, they need to integrate multiple contact channels seamlessly through a single endpoint.
Mega-trend: mobility
Remote collaboration is enabled by affordable and sophisticated landline and wireless broadband, voice and data connections, advanced endpoints, and unified communications (UC) tools. It is critical, therefore, to provide remote and mobile workers with devices that reduce noise levels and provide integrated access to multiple communications endpoints, and thus enable the effective use of advanced communications and collaboration tools.
Plantronics Voyager Legend UC
Frost & Sullivan identifies the Voyager Legend as an innovative solution addressing the key mega-trends. It supports mobile and soft phones, and offers up to seven hours of talk time; three microphones; plus significant improvements in wind noise reduction. It has caller ID/name announcement for incoming calls; the ability to answer or ignore incoming mobile calls by using voice commands; and a voice recognition button for connection and battery status. For more information, visit: http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/voyager-legend-uc.
Frost & Sullivan recognises that Plantronics has invested a significant amount of research and development (R&D) into its industry-first Smart Sensor technology, integrated into the Voyager Legend headset line-up. The technology senses when the headset is on or off the user's head/ear. It then makes smart decisions whether to connect the call automatically or to announce the call and wait for a voice or touch command.
Frost & Sullivan highlights that support for various software applications through Plantronics in-house software development or partnerships creates new use cases for headset devices and enhances their value to end-users. For more information about Plantronics Software Development programme or to access the SDK, please visit http://developer.plantronics.com.
For the Visionary Innovation Leadership Award, the following criteria were used by Frost & Sullivan to benchmark Plantronics' performance against key competitors:
* Understanding and leverage of mega-trends
* Vision integration into strategy excellence
* Efficacy of innovation process
* Degree of impact on business and society
* Alignment with mega-trends
To access the Frost & Sullivan "Visionary Innovation Award for Unified Communications & Collaboration and Customer Care, North America, 2013" research report in its entirety, please visit: www.plantronics.com/enterpriseconnect2013.
According to Frost & Sullivan, mega-trends are transformational to business, economy, society, cultures, and personal lives, thereby defining the future world and its increasing pace of change. The mega-trends affecting UCC and customer care are connectivity and convergence and mobility.
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