Polycom, a company that manufactures and sells telepresence and voice communications solutions has announced a partnership with Lenovo that will see its video conferencing software being shipped with the latter’s future laptops and tablets. This is the first time a PC manufacturer has announced to provide certified Polycom-ready devices – a pretty big deal since Lenovo is the world’s second largest PC maker.

In the first half of 2012, Lenovo will offer select ThinkPad tablets and laptops that are certified Polycom-ready, specifically for RealPresence Mobile and RealPresence Desktop software. We’ll be seeing Lenovo’s ThinkPad T, X, L and W Series laptop as well as the ThinkPad tablet (expected in the first half of 2012) to ship with Polycom RealPresence software.

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As usual, a big chunk of the news out of the Consumer Electronics Show this year revolves around bright-and-shiny devices. But this time out, those devices are acting as the Trojan horses for the hardware makers’ cloud vision.

Backend cloud services are now pretty much required as hardware companies struggle to build more intimate relationships with PC or tablet buyers to keep them coming back for more. With the exception of Apple Macs, most desktop and laptop PCs are seen as pretty much interchangeable: People buy what’s cheapest.

At CES, Acer showed off a new slim Ultrabook measuring 15 mm thick at its fattest point and weighing less than three pounds. But, more importantly, the company also launched AcerCloud, which will let PC users store and retrieve their files any time. Cloud access will come with all new Acer consumer PCs. The effort was promptly slammed as a blatant knock-off of Apple’s iCloud.

In that same vein, Lenovo announced Lenovo Personal Cloud along with its new hardware. Lenovo’s own verbiage shows what these hardware companies are trying to do. Lenovo’s “personal cloud vision” marks:

the transformation of the company from a “personal computer” manufacturer to a “personal cloud solution” provider that integrates hardware, software and cloud computing together

The wrinkle here is that these PC makers – Acer, Hewlett-Packard Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell et al., are competing not only against each other but against nimbler new-age companies that offer cloud-based storage, compute and application services without being tied down to a hardware albatross. That means Acer and Lenovo are also competing with the likes of Dropbox, Box.net and others as well as Amazon which is using its Kindle franchise as the storefront to its massive online store.

The beauty of the cloud computing model, which conceals so much complexity from the user as reported here, is that it can deliver very easy to obtain and consume services without requiring much technical savvy on the part of that user. Hardware makers now know they have to be in this game to make their endpoints desirable in this increasingly connected world. In short, they’re offering more cloud services to keep themselves — and their hardware — relevant.

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Vor der Foto-Kamera und auf der Kinoleinwand sehen sie immer aalglatt aus. Stars scheinen immer eine perfekte Haut zu haben. Wenn sie älter werden, gesteht man ihnen vielleicht ein paar ihrer natürlichen Fältchen zu, die aus dem Bild nicht wegretuschiert werden. Aber eines haben Stars scheinbar nie – Akne. Dabei ist es doch die häufigste […]

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