MeetingZone, a independent provider of conferencing and collaboration services that provides high performance, low-cost personalized audio and web conferencing services to its customers, has announced to introduce a new collaboration portal powered by MetraTech (News - Alert) Corp., a provider of innovative charging, billing, settlement and customer care products.

The new portal will help to drive the widespread adoption of integrated conferencing and collaboration solutions, and will establish highest industry standards for ease of use and self-service functionality, MeetingZone claims.

Leveraging the MetraNet product by MetraTech, the new portal has been developed with an aim to offer the customers of MeetingZone instant account access, so they can quickly set up or join an integrated conferencing and collaboration session and view real-time billing data and usage reports. They will also be able to add users, change conference preferences, manage their conference recordings, schedule one-off conferences and manage multiple accounts and account hierarchies right from within the portal itself.

According to Tim Duffy, CEO, MeetingZone, the company has combined extensive research with its many years of experience delivering conferencing and collaboration to design and build a next-generation conferencing portal that makes it easier than ever before for everyone to collaborate online.

Duffy said that a huge part of MeetingZone’s success can be attributed to the company's drive for openness and transparency in its billing system, as the customers of the company see exactly the same billing information as its employees do. This allows them to accurately monitor and manage their conferencing and collaboration costs from department level down to individual users at any given time.

In the words of Scott Swartz (News - Alert), CEO, MetraTech Corp., MeetingZone has always understood the critical connection between superior customer care and an accurate and understandable bill, and MetraTech has worked with MeetingZone from the company's inception and is thrilled to be part of this latest accomplishment. Swartz congratulated MeetingZone on the launch of its innovative, customer friendly conferencing portal, and noted that MetraTech is proud that it has been an important contributing factor in the launch.

Marc Beattie, Managing Partner, Wainhouse (News - Alert) Research, commented that MeetingZone has a unique approach in providing collaboration services, and by making it fantastically easy for users to manage their own accounts, review activity in real-time and provision new users, the company has given more control and in a very accessible fashion than most other providers.

January 2010, COLT (News - Alert), a European provider of business communications announced it had been selected by MeetingZone to provide IP connectivity for supporting company’s audio conferencing facilities in the United Kingdom and Europe.