Merger madness:

While Accordent immediately brings support for and , deeper integration is being planned, says Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president of solutions product marketing, but wouldn't offer details.

The deal will mean the end of Polycom's OEM deal with Qumu, which had been supplying Polycom with video management appliances. That arrangement will be phased out as Accordent software is phased in, but Polycom will continue to support the Qumu OEMd products for five years, Kruger says.

The Accordent deal will give Polycom an advantage selling video gear to service providers that can use it to offer business-to-business video services. So if two companies want to have a videoconference between themselves, a service provider could sell a service that brings the separate systems together for the call. Similarly, the gear could support a software-as-a-service model in which providers offer managed video services, he says.

Accordent software enables communicating via video and also recording, storing and giving access to appropriate groups, he says.