Unified communications solutions seamlessly integrate voice, HD video, instant messaging, e-mail integration and mobility, and allow for these solutions to be fully accessible from any computer or device. A recent Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) study predict that in the next 12-month period, unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and information and communications (ICT) spaces will likely seamlessly integrate.
BroadSoft (News - Alert), a provider of software and services that enable mobile, fixed-line and cable services providers to offer unified communications over their IP network, has a solid presence in the United States. It recently was awarded the INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award for its Business Communicator solution. Now, the company is seeking partners in the United Kingdom for its unified communications platform to strengthen its presence in the region. As more small companies turn to the “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend, they are facing the challenge of developing a unified communications infrastructure across mobile and company-based facilities.
“We have a growing reseller business within North America that’s starting to drive interest in Europe,” said Leslie Ferry, BroadSoft’s vice president for marketing. “A lot of that has something to do with the PBX (News - Alert) providers and their compensation structure changes, so that’s opportunistic for us. In addition to the market moving to a hosted option the channel resellers and systems integrators are looking for a strong hosted solution as well.”
Unified Communications is no longer available only to the largest of large enterprises. Using BroadWorks and its tight integration with business applications from companies like Microsoft (News - Alert), IBM and Google, service providers are able to offer "UC as a Service." The service provider hosts UC "in the cloud," and businesses buy UC on an as-needed basis, similar to proven Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models.
It also added Rich Communications Services (RCS) to its BroadCloud SaaS, its cloud-based, hosted infrastructure that serves as the foundation for BroadSoft's growing cloud-based communications capabilities. Adding RCS has brought managed service capabilities comprising converged messaging, presence, media sharing, voice and video conferencing.
“In the last year we’ve really focused on having an intuitive user experience – a client that’s accessible on your laptop or mobile phone, that integrates all of your communications services into a single application,” said Ferry. “If I’m having an instant messaging chat and it’s getting to be a more-detailed conversation, I can flick my phone icon and escalate that to a video call.”
The addition of RCS to BroadCloud also provides a boost in terms of time-to-market and a drop in costs associated with deployment, as well as a reduced complexity, which provides much of the impetus behind the preceding advantages. BroadCloud RCS offers high versatility for users as well, being equally usable in IMS networks as well as those networks that don't have IMS.
“The area we’re focused on is the growing mobility of communications. We need to make sure that whatever service we enable can be accessed on any device. The uniqueness is the openness of our platform and the APIs. We partner with other folks that integrate our communications services with their business processes to have a complete solution for a vertical,” Ferry explained.
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Edited by Rich Steeves