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NextPlane Launches Voice/Video Cloud Service for Disparate UC PlatformsMay 18, 2012 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- NextPlane, Inc., a provider of cloud-based federation services for unified communications (UC), has launched a new service to federate video and voice across disparate enterprise UC networks. According to a release, the first stage of the new voice/video Federation-as-a-Service (FaaS) solution will provide voice and video federation between Microsoft (Lync and OCS) and Google Apps. With the launch of this new service, NextPlane reported it now can interconnect enterprises with voice and video without requiring additional hardware or software and without impacting the end-users' native UC experience. Federation of a voice or video call between Microsoft OCS or Lync and Google Apps was previously not possible, but with the NextPlane Federation Cloud providing hi-fidelity federation between the different UC platforms, users get the same features and functions as if they were on the same platform. In addition to adding video support between Microsoft OCS and Lync and Google Apps, the NextPlane Federation Cloud allows users on Microsoft Lync, OCS, and LCS; Cisco Unified Presence Server (CUPS), Jabber XCP, and WebEx Connect; IBM Sametime; Google Apps, and Jive OpenFire to share presence, chat, instant messages, and participate in multi-user chat. "Enterprise UC users are starting to look beyond their corporate boundaries to enable rich collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers regardless of underlying UC platforms, and taking advantage of a cloud-based service is the best way to establish fast, seamless federation," said Farzin Shahidi, CEO of NextPlane. "We already support federation between Microsoft Lync or OCS and Google Apps for IM, presence, and multi-user chat, but this new service marks the first time we are offering video as well as voice federation. Our long-term objective is to eliminate the UC Tower of Babel and make it possible to federate any service from any UC platform through a cloud-based service." Even with open standards such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), seamless federation of multi-vendor UC platforms that give users all the rich features of presence, multi-user chat, and other UC functions remains an elusive challenge for enterprises and service providers. NextPlane overcomes this challenge by providing a common, integrated platform so enterprise customers can allow users to work together as if they were served by a common UC platform, sharing presence, exchanging IM, and participating in multiparty chat, voice, and video. Furthermore, NextPlane Federation Cloud service allows enterprises to set policies that allow or deny federated voice and video traffic by domains and/or users. More Information: www.nextplane.net ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) |