China's Largest Commercial Bank Selects Polycom for Company-Wide Video Conferencing Network; Commercial Bank of China Deploys Over 300 Polycom ViewStation Systems and MCUs.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 30, 2003

Polycom(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:PLCM), the world's leader in video and voice conferencing, conference bridges, and integrated web collaboration solutions, today announced that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's largest commercial bank, has implemented a company-wide Polycom video conferencing network. The new IP-based video deployment comprises more than 300 Polycom VS4000(R) video conferencing systems and 24 Polycom MGC(TM) multipoint control units (MCUs), making it one of the largest video networks in China.

ICBC deployed its Polycom video conferencing network to reduce unnecessary business travel between branches, enhance inter-branch collaboration and replace an existing smaller network based on satellite technology. It is also used extensively for meetings, training and business interactions.

"As China's economic, structural and strategic reforms are accelerating and the markets continue to open up to foreign competition, the ICBC Bank is aggressively restructuring all of its internal systems. This video conferencing network will play a key role in facilitating these changes and preparing the bank for the future," said Steven Li, sales director for Polycom China.

ICBC is the largest commercial bank in China and one of the top ten commercial banks in the world. It is the market leader in all major areas of the banking service in China and maintains more than 22,000 domestic outlets and 70 overseas branches and offices.

The Technology

At the centerpiece of this project, the Polycom VS4000 video conferencing system offers high-quality video images and audio for the most demanding applications. The Bank adopted Polycom's dual-stream People+Content technology for simultaneous transmission of high quality video images and high resolution data sharing. The dynamic images of participants can be transmitted along to end-points together with graphical information such as pictures and photos simultaneously displayed on projectors or video recorders.

ICBC's video conferencing network is based on a high-speed Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) backbone and centrally managed via Polycom's Global Management System (GMS) network management software.

As an indispensable video multipoint control unit (MCU), Polycom MGC-100 is an industry-leading multimedia application platform offering video, audio and data conferencing based on IP, ISDN and other dedicated networks. Other value-added features include transcoding, continuous presence, panel control, voice activation, direct swapping, on-demand conference mode, conference scheduling, recording and billing. All of the Polycom's MGC offerings come with API ports for users to develop their own application platforms for better control and management of video collaboration.

About the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China

Founded in 1984, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is China's largest commercial bank. By the end of 2002, the total assets had been approximately RMB4.8 trillion, a quarter of the sum of domestic assets owned by China's commercial banks. In 2002, the operation profits were RMB44.9 billion.

The ICBC is also a large international bank. It has 71 sub-branches and stock-controlling banks in all major international financial centers around the world. By the end of 2002, its overseas correspondent banks had reached 1,020. At the end of 2002, total foreign exchange assets of the ICBC had reached US$49.9 billion. Settlement volume of international business of the year was US$118.6 billion.

The ICBC was praised as "China's best bank" for three successive times by famous financial journals, such as the Banker of England and Global Finance. The ICBC has been in the Top Ten for three consecutive years, and been first in China for five consecutive years. American authoritative financial journal, Fortune, rated ICBC as the strongest 500 enterprises in the world according to their operation revenues. The ICBC has been listed for four consecutive years. For additional information, please visit the ICBC site at www.icbc.com.cn.

About Polycom

Polycom, Inc. is the world's technology leader of high-quality, easy-to-use video, voice, data and web conferencing and collaboration solutions. The Polycom Office(TM) is our continued commitment to make distance communications as natural and interactive as being there by providing best-in-class conferencing solutions that are interoperable, integrated and intuitive to the user. The Polycom Office is based on industry standards and supported by an open architecture that promotes interoperability in multi-vendor environments and complements leading network infrastructure platforms. For additional information call 800/POLYCOM (765-9266) or 408/526-9000, or visit the Polycom website at www.polycom.com.

Polycom and the Polycom logo are registered trademarks and VS4000, MGC-100 and The Polycom Office are trademarks of Polycom in the U.S. and various countries.