Hosted/Cloud VoIP and UC

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

The top hosted VoIP providers in North America are 8x8 (News - Alert), West IP Communications, Comcast, and Verizon, according to new data from Infonetics Research. The firm reports that West, which last year occupied the No. 4 spot, is now in second place due to strong demand for its Cisco (News - Alert)-based solution. XO is also toward the front of the pack.

"Always near the top of our hosted VoIP scorecard, 8x8 broke through this year to take the No. 1 spot decisively by building on a solid financial position and continued focus on service enhancements and geographic expansion," said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research. "While 8x8 still serves predominantly small companies, it's finding more and more success with larger businesses."

Other noteworthy developments in the hosted VoIP space include the appearance of Mitel on the scorecard. The company in January merged with Aastra.

Here’s a rundown of some of the companies in the hosted and cloud-based VoIP and UC arena.

3CLogic

www.3clogic.com

3CLogic offers a complete suite of inbound, outbound, and blended cloud call center software designed for both SMB and enterprise businesses. Providing a multichannel communications platform (phone, voice, e-mail, and chat), the solution delivers both basic and advanced contact center features including IVR, ACD, predictive and preview dialer, skills-based routing, real-time dashboards, advanced reporting, business intelligence, and dynamic scripting. More importantly, 3CLogic helps facilitate sales, marketing, and customer service initiatives through its advanced third-party integrations with CRM, WFM, ticketing and PBX applications, as it provides customers with a 360-degree view of their entire client base. As a true cloud solution, hosted on Amazon Web Services, 3CLogic provides the latest in edge computing technology while avoiding the common pitfalls and limitations of traditional centralized server architectures. Combining the power of cloud with the added benefits of a distributed architecture, its solutions offer limitless access to on-demand IT resources, while mitigating cost, enhancing reliability, and offering businesses the ability to quickly adapt to changes in customer demands.

8x8

www.8x8.com

8x8 Inc.  is the trusted provider of secure and reliable cloud-based unified communications and virtual contact center solutions to more than 39,000 small, midsize and distributed enterprise organizations operating in over 40 countries across six continents. 8x8's out-of-the-box cloud solutions replace traditional on-premises PBX hardware and software-based systems with a flexible and scalable SaaS alternative, encompassing cloud business phone service, contact center solutions, and web conferencing. Gartner has placed 8x8 in the leaders quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, multiregional, for the third consecutive year.

Altitude Software

www.altitude.com

Altitude Cloud Contact Center offers a complete contact center solution on the cloud with cost-effective options for every business need. It is suitable for a small or large operation, an outsourcer or in-house contact center, and providing inbound or outbound service. The solution was designed to speed up operations, while simplifying the management complexity, increasing productivity, reducing operational efforts, and, ultimately, raising customer satisfaction levels. This modular solution unifies all touch points throughout the organization, in outbound, inbound, and blending, regardless of the channel used for contact – voice, e-mail, SMS/MMS, fax, messaging or web.

Apptix

www.apptix.com

Apptix provides advanced cloud-based business voice services from hosted VoIP to hosted unified communications. Apptix’s Hosted VoIP is a cost-efficient alternative to traditional PBX business phone systems. It encompasses enterprise-class hosted business phone service across multiple sites, online management tools that make administration easy, and scalability to add and delete users instantly. Standard features include a session border controller to prioritize VoIP traffic and guarantee call quality along with an auto attendant or virtual receptionist and mobility services for remote user management. Companies can keep existing phone numbers and select pre-configured desktop or conference business phones for easy installation. Apptix Hosted Unified Communications provides all the communications and collaboration tools business users need in an affordable, easy-to-deploy solution. It integrates Microsoft Exchange e-mail with Mobile Sync, VoIP, Outlook Integrated Voicemail, Microsoft Lync Web Conferencing and Instant Messaging with Presence, and Microsoft SharePoint. Companies can streamline communications and collaboration with connectivity anytime, anywhere at a fraction of the cost of a traditional system.

Aspect

www.aspect.com

Zipwire is a pure cloud, Saas-based contact center solution from Aspect with a feature set offering simplicity in provisioning, support and on-going operations. It is designed to get a contact center up and running in hours. Delivered through Aspect’s Voxeo (News - Alert) cloud and telco infrastructure, Zipwire can be deployed with the company’s cloud network while providing a scalable, hosted solution that's flexible enough to quickly adapt as a business needs change. Aspect Hosted gives customers choices in implementing Aspect’s Unified IP contact center solution with both cloud and hybrid deployments options delivered through a managed, secure data center with resilience built in. Customer environments are fully supported through initial implementation and custom configuration, user training, and ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Aspect also offers pre-deployed, managed solutions using Voxeo Prophecy and CXP platforms, that will get IVR and multi-channel self-service applications up and running with little up-front cost, low IT overhead, and the capacity to grow to thousands of lines as demand warrants.

Avaya

www.avaya.com

Avaya is a leading global provider of unified communications and collaboration solutions for businesses of all sizes worldwide. Avaya’s cloud services portfolio includes Avaya Private Cloud Services, delivered by HP Enterprises, Avaya’s go-to-market partner, Avaya Powered Cloud Services, and Avaya Branded Services. Avaya Private Cloud Services provide large and commercial enterprises, along with large midmarket segments, with customizable dedicated single instances of customer experience management and unified communications solutions that typically include attached managed and professional services. Avaya Powered Cloud Services deliver the same robust offerings of opex-based CEM and UC solutions, however, this portfolio of services is hosted and branded by a cloud service provider or systems integrator. Deployed via private or public clouds, virtualization of these cloud services over Avaya’s SIP-based Aura platform provides a pay as you grow utility-based consumption model. Avaya Branded Cloud Services are SaaS offerings, including AvayaLive Connect, AvayaLive Engage, AvayaLive Video, AvayaLive Contact, Avaya Cloud Automated Chat, Avaya Cloud Messaging, and Avaya Cloud Collaboration Environment. These retail cloud services are branded and hosted by Avaya, deployed in public clouds, and can be sold by Avaya’s channel partners and CSPs.

BullsEye Telecom

www.bullseyetelecom.com

BullsEye’s Hosted PBX solution is the easy business phone system that can save you up to 33 percent on your phone bill. BullsEye makes it simple for a business of any size to upgrade to a new phone system with no out-of-pocket cost and a risk-free guarantee. A complete package includes free Polycom phones and unlimited local and long-distance calling at a flat rate. Our cordless lineup provides greater mobility and easy expansion for retail locations and warehouses. Now you can place a phone anywhere there is an outlet rather than relying on traditional Ethernet jacks. Enjoy greater control with powerful online management tools via your personal online portal. Make real-time account changes, manage service requests, and obtain in-depth business insight with key reports available online anytime. As a single accountable partner, we eliminate the hassle of managing multiple providers across your locations and provide a live U.S.-based support team that is standing by 24/7 to serve you. Whether you have one or 1,000 locations, we simplify billing operations with a single invoice for all your locations and services.

Cisco

www.cisco.com

From IP communications to mobility, customer care, web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions are offered across on-premises, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.

Citrix

www.gotoassist.com

Citrix GoToAssist is a cloud-based, integrated support solution that offers contact centers and IT support professionals a combination of easy-to-use service desk management, remote support, and IT monitoring. With access to key support functions from one interface, GoToAssist provides the functionality to maintain uptimes for people and devices. Mobile support is also offered to and from devices at no additional cost. For users on Android (News - Alert) devices, GoToAssist now offers its SeeIT live camera streaming feature so customers can quickly show their issue to a support technician. GoToAssist also offers chat, enabling initiation of chat and service requests from different customer contact points including social, web, community, and self-service sites. Live chat sessions can be seamlessly transitioned into full screen-sharing and remote control sessions to resolve more complex problems. For larger contact center operations, GoToAssist offers additional functionality such as advanced administration, reporting and integration features. Purchase and a 30-day free trial is available from the Citrix GoToAssist website.

Comcast Business

http://business.comcast.com

Comcast Business VoiceEdge is a cloud-based, hosted voice solution offering a full suite of UC and mobility features, a predictable monthly cost and HD-quality voice service, allowing today’s contact centers to communicate more efficiently. Business VoiceEdge is fully managed by Comcast, and eliminates the need for expensive on-site equipment such as PBXs and key systems. Business VoiceEdge delivers unlimited nationwide calling, state-of-the-art Polycom phones at no additional charge, and a full range of UC and mobility features. That includes the Be Anywhere feature, for which work lines can integrate with mobile devices, home office, or other locations to have calls follow or push/pull between devices without having to disconnect and then reconnect the call.
 

It includes voicemail-to-email, for which voice messages reach workers when unavailable/working remotely by sending a voicemail to their email. The Telephony Toolbar is a downloadable client that enables click-to-dial and service management from within Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. Business Voice Continuity allows users to redirect calls to back-up numbers during power outages or other on-site issues to keep business operating. Subscribers also can conduct on-net calling between sites using extensions for a unified calling experience, add new locations quickly, and share call handling across offices. 

DSCI

www.dscicorp.com

DSCI’s UCx Hosted Unified Communications Service streamlines business processes by integrating several communications tools and applications into one all-encompassing platform. UCx users can place and receive high-definition audio and video calls from a computer, desk phone, or smartphone using their business line identity. UCx users can also use the UCx application to launch instant messaging, desktop sharing, and group collaboration sessions at the click of a button. Receptionists and call center agents gain powerful web-based tools for inbound call management. Administrators can manage and customize features for the user, group, and enterprise through a web portal. UCx is delivered on the DSCI Hosted Communications Network, which is backed by a 100 percent network uptime guarantee and 24/7/365 live-answer support from DSCI’s New Hampshire-based Customer Care team. DSCI continually rolls out new features for UCx over its network, enabling its customers to gain immediate access to the latest UC technology without having to purchase and install new hardware.

Easy Office Phone (News - Alert)

www.easyofficephone.com

Easy Office Phone provides cloud-based business phone service to companies of all sizes. Consistently ranked among the top providers in North America for customer satisfaction, Easy Office Phone offers cost savings over traditional telecom, a broad hosted PBX feature set, friendly customer support, and a reliable continent-wide network. Customers can control their service from anywhere, at any time, via a user-friendly web interface. For call centers, the service offers powerful call queuing along with extensive tracking and reporting tools. The company's Dealer Program lets technology firms offer enterprise-grade hosted PBX to their own clients, opening up new revenue streams.

Esna Technologies

www.esna.com

Esna is a provider of embedded collaboration solutions. Esna’s solutions let people collaborate anytime, anywhere by putting real-time communications inside the productivity, CRM, ERP, social and cloud applications they use every day. Esna Cloudlink 5.0 for Cisco embeds Cisco Collaboration Solutions inside cloud-based applications, workflow, and business processes, enabling people to collaborate faster and more effectively. Esna Cloudlink makes it easy to access real-time communication tools like presence, instant messaging, voice and video communication, click-to-call, call management, geo-location services, and unified messaging inside cloud applications like Google Apps, Salesforce, Jive and IBM (News - Alert) SmartCloud. Esna Cloudlink leverages standards-based SIP, Cisco APIs, and Cisco Jabber to connect these cloud applications with Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco WebEx, Cisco HCS and Cisco Business Edition 6000. Esna Cloudlink 5.0 is sold as a subscription-based service. The MSRP (per user, per year) begins at $15.

Estech Systems Inc.

www.esi-estech.com

ESI (News - Alert) provides high-performance phone systems designed for growing businesses and is a premier provider of cloud- and premises-based UC solutions that are easy to use, intuitive, and uniquely integrated. Its portfolio includes cloud PBX, SIP trunking, virtual fax, on-premises digital and IP phone systems, presence and access management solutions, and mobile and vertical billing applications. ESI Cloud PBX blends the fully-integrated features of the ESI desk phone with its web-based application for real-time visibility and an unmatched customer experience. Integrated features include one-touch call recording, personalized call routing, multi-device management, drag-and-drop phone programming, visual voice mail, audio conferencing, and unlimited NA local and long-distance calling plans. ESI SIP trunking turns legacy PBX phone systems into the latest in VoIP technology, converging existing telephone infrastructure onto a data network for high-quality voice communications. Abillity is a simple billing application integrated with the business phone, enabling users to quickly review each call and categorize it for proper billing. The product connects a mobile device to the office phone with ESI’s mobile application Ditto, allowing users to never miss another call no matter where they are. Both applications are available for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Five9

www.five9.com

Five9 is the largest, pure cloud contact center software provider, facilitating more than three billion customer interactions annually. Replacing legacy providers, Five9 helps organizations of every size transition from premises-based software to the cloud. Offering inbound, outbound, and blended contact center capabilities, Five9 solutions are designed to support all types of contact center needs, including customer support, telemarketing, financial services and outsourcing. Five9 also provides a multichannel offering that empowers agents to move seamlessly between social media, mobile care, live chat, e-mail, and voice calls. Unlike complex on-premises systems, the Five9 Virtual Contact Center Platform was created with the business user in mind. The Five9 Virtual Contact Center Platform is the hub for all contact center-enabling technologies – automatic call distribution, computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, and predictive, progressive, power, and preview dialers. Five9 pioneered the concept of VoIP-based virtual call center software-as-a-service – and provides all the benefits of a hosted solution: fast setup, on-demand capacity, no capital outlay, and low operating costs. Five9 also provides seamless integrations with leading CRM solutions like Salesforce, Oracle RightNow, NetSuite, Velocify, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 

Fonality

www.fonality.com

In today’s mobile-centric and location-independent business world, Fonality’s award-winning Heads Up Display Web is designed to empower employees to work smarter, more efficiently and more collaboratively. HUD Web is an intuitive, web-based application that connects users to all their communication tools including phone, chat, email, voicemail, video collaboration, audio conferencing, file sharing, and more all in one place. Accessible from any location, the tool can be used in a web browser, on Apple and Android mobile devices, or through Fonality’s desktop application. The application enables mobile and remote workers to collaborate seamlessly from wherever they are. Once logged in, calls can be transferred to the user, regardless of location and queue participation is available from anywhere. HUD Web improves internal communications company-wide and saves employees up to 2 hours a day in productivity. It also provides business managers the ability to reduce interruptions and streamline collaboration within teams, departments or branches, helping to reduce the day-to-day communications friction that slows business momentum and growth.

GENBAND

www.genband.com

GENBAND NUViAT  is a cloud-based solution for unified communication-as-a-service. NUViA offers organizations of any size a more cost-effective way to supplement or eliminate traditional premises-based PBXs and key systems. Connect with traditional desk phones or a variety of full-featured soft clients for smartphones, tablets, Macs and PCs, or use just a web browser. Built on the same GENBAND service provider platforms that support more than 40 million IP lines, NUViA is designed to support hundreds of sites and thousands of users across the globe. Centralized administration tools give an IT team multi-level control of directories, policies, and services. NUViA is standards-based so most SIP devices will seamlessly interoperate and NUViA does not use proprietary devices or special licenses to lock in users. The advanced service offers choices from basic phone packages, robust unified communications (including conferencing and screen share), and sophisticated, omni-channel, contact centers. NUViA is deployed and managed worldwide by GENBAND and resold through authorized resellers.

Genesys

www.genesyslab.com/products/genesys-cloud/overview.aspx

Genesys Cloud delivers customer interactions to the right channel with intelligent routing, which through easily configurable business rules tunes the customer experience. It allows users to more rapidly create the most effective, high-value customer experience, while reducing infrastructure costs, demands on IT resources, and security concerns. Genesys Cloud utilizes the Genesys Customer Experience Platform to power optimal customer experiences, which are consistent, personalized and journey appropriate across all touchpoints, channels and interactions. This offering includes contact center, workforce optimization, proactive customer communications, self-service, and mobile marketing. Genesys Customer Experience Platform, along with recently integrated capabilities previously offered by Angel and SoundBite, is now fully available in the cloud. This includes intelligent routing capabilities that allow users to tune the experience they deliver, including optimal resource assignment. Open integration with existing systems also protects legacy investments. With Genesys, users can increase operational efficiency with self-service provisioning for iterative improvements, and to enable the high-quality design of applications using best practices.

Intelemedia Communications Inc.

ww.intelemedia.com

For both inbound customer care and inbound sales, Intelemedia’s Leaders Choice combines a cloud-based call management platform with call center resources. Clients utilizing multiple outsourced call center partners benefit from a unified platform encompassing performance-based call routing, call recording, web-based order entry/ scripting, centralized and unified reporting, and professional management of the entire process. That includes access to the best available agents across the country’s top call centers for each and every customer call, with analytic and reporting tools allowing managing the network a simple task. Delivering client calls in real time to the highest performing agents in the network results in increased sales conversion and order-sizes.   A higher percentage of client calls can be handled by the highest performing agents, resulting in a higher percentage of calls being resolved. It offers users improved save and retention rates by routing calls to the highest specific skills among multiple call centers.

Dynamic intelligent routing among multiple centers means that calls are answered more quickly which reduces abandonment rates. And actionable intelligence means that management can make faster and more informed decisions.

inContact

www.inContact.com  

inContact's cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools help organizations around the globe create high quality customer experiences. inContact is 100 percent focused on the cloud and is the only provider to combine cloud software with an enterprise-class telecommunications network for a complete customer interaction solution. Our cloud platform reduces IT maintenance costs, does not require hardware or software investment, and delivers the ability to scale service up or down as you need it. Multi-channel ACD and speech-enabled IVR are the two building blocks of our call center platform. Based on your needs, you can add CRM and CTI Integration, ECHO Customer Feedback, Predictive Dialer, Reporting & Analytics, Workforce Optimization, Quality Monitoring, Workforce Management, Operations Dashboard, Analytics-Driven Quality, Network Connectivity, and Disaster Recovery. Personal ConnectionT is a patented outbound solution that eliminates delays when greeting a caller while increasing productivity as agents make multiple predictive calls. The inContact Agent Console for Salesforce enables intelligent contact routing so the call and caller information are delivered on a single, unified screen on the agent's desktop. inContact's complete, multi-channel solution is designed to enhance personalized service experiences, delivering more 1-to-1 connections with customers while providing game-changing contact center effectiveness.

Interactive Intelligence

www.inin.com

Interactive Intelligence Communications-as-a-Service is a set of cloud-based contact center and unified communications applications for mid-size to large organizations. Interactive Intelligence CaaS offers customers maximum reliability and security through customer data isolation, proactive monitoring, a 24/7 NOC, an option to keep all voice traffic within the customer’s network, and a number of certifications, including SOX, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, JITC, SSAE-16 SOC2, and PCI DSS Security Standards compliance. Interactive Intelligence CaaS also offers maximum return on investment with a broad set of applications for business users and agents all delivered by a single vendor. It also offers several cloud deployment choices and the ability to migrate from the cloud to on-premises. For organizations with between 10 and 50 contact center agents, Interactive Intelligence offers CaaS Small Center. This cloud-based contact center solution gives smaller organizations easy to understand service and pricing packages, along with simple deployment, configuration and management. CaaS Small Center minimizes risk through a free product test drive, a guarantee to be up and running within 15 days, a dedicated implementation manager, on-demand training, and no long-term contract commitment.

LiveOps

www.liveops.com

LiveOps Engage is an integrated agent desktop application that unifies interactions across social, mobile and traditional voice/text contact center channels. The single-screen interface of LiveOps Engage provides a complete view of the customer and his or her interaction history across all channels in one place, and enables agents to engage faster and more effectively in whichever channel the customer prefers or requires. LiveOps Management Applications provide visibility into contact center performance and the power to make changes in minutes instead of months – without help from IT. LiveOps Platform As a Service enables seamless operation between LiveOps Cloud Contact Center and leading CRM solutions such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Sugar CRM, providing agents with the data they need to perform successful customer interactions. LiveOps for Salesforce is a native telephony application for Salesforce that leverages Open CTI for seamless CRM integration, providing sales, marketing, and service agents access anywhere, on any device, and from any browser to provide instant contact center deployment and eliminating plug-ins.

Masergy

www.masergy.com

Masergy’s UCaaS, with its Global Presence, provides an all-in-one business communications service – connecting information, people, and resources anywhere, anytime. The company offers a global carrier-grade platform for voice, video, mobile, instant messaging, presence, and web collaboration for a wide range of enterprises and multi-location organizations. Masergy also offers comprehensive engineering consultation and best-in-class customer support. Masergy UCaaS customers enjoy the flexibility of leveraging Masergy’s integrated managed cloud networking for high performance service guarantees, or can utilize third-party connectivity services. Masergy's hybrid delivery models enable enterprises to migrate to a fully hosted cloud solution on their timeline. Midmarket companies can choose convenient UCaaS bundles – affordable, easy to deploy UC solutions delivered from the cloud. Masergy recently announced the availability of UCaaS Analyst - the industry’s first cloud-based analytics solution for enterprise unified communications that enables enhanced business planning and management, available free of charge to all Masergy’s UC customers. UCaaS Analyst is delivered from the cloud, so all upgrades and new features are instantly available without the need for new software or hardware upgrades. 

MegaPath

www.megapath.com/voice/hosted

MegaPath’s Hosted Voice solution provides organizations with more functionality than traditional phone systems, without the costs of managing and maintaining a PBX. It is a high-performance, no-maintenance solution with more than 50 basic and advanced calling features, including visual voicemail, find me/follow me, and call recording. The company also recently launched its unified communications add-on for hosted voice, integrating its IP voice telephony capabilities with enhanced collaboration features such as presence, instant messaging, SMS text messaging, screen sharing, and video calling. This offering enables employees to easily and instantly connect and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers from desktop and mobile devices using their business VoIP numbers. MegaPath has complete control over its network, voice traffic is prioritized from end-to-end, providing the highest QoS to ensure clear call quality.

NTT Communications Corp.

www.ntt.com

One of the largest telecom carriers in the world, NTT Communications provides Arcstar UCaaS, a cloud-based unified communications service package designed to facilitate effective collaboration among employees in multiple locations. Voice, video, presence management, voice mail, instant messaging, and video/web conferences are integrated in one instance to speed up information sharing and decision making, with Arcstar SIP Trunking Service for On and Off-net call to PSTN. As a value added service, Customer Web-Portal, enhances usability with easy change management and service transparency, in addition to another service, Web directory on the cloud, which enables one-click call from any device. The company’s global UCaaS platform, which spans across Japan, the U.K., and the U.S., ensures high-quality service in more than 150 countries/regions. Its vast suite of services provides international enterprises with greater flexibility and scalability, making them easier to deploy across multiple regions. Arcstar Conferencing, NTT Com’s Audio/Video/Web conferences services, are now powered by Arkadin, a leading conferencing and collaboration provider that recently joined NTT Com Group. Arkadin and NTT Com’s geographic proximity to enterprise client locations will appeal to enterprise clients’ prerequisites for high levels of client care and service management.

One Source Networks

www.onesourcenetworks.com

One Source Networks provides global voice and managed network services to large enterprises. The company’s SIP trunking service is part of its comprehensive suite of cloud-based communications offerings, which includes other hosted apps such as Cloud PBX, Cloud Call Center, and Cloud Contact Center. SIP trunking enables integration of unified communications services, such as voice, video and chat, over a single connection, delivering cost and infrastructure efficiency. Additionally, enterprises can expand global presence with OSN’s SIP-based network that interconnects with more than 200 global suppliers, as well as international telephony services, which include DIDs in 3,700-plus non-U.S. cities and 65-plus countries and over 90 percent of U.S. markets. For enterprises that need to meet business continuity objectives, OSN’s SIP trunking includes built-in trunk redundancy, as well as advanced failover options at either the trunk or individual telephone number level. OSN recently expanded SIP trunking with a service option, Secure Trunking, which guarantees encryption of customers’ sensitive call signaling and media. Further, OSN’s SIP Trunking is Microsoft Lync 2013-certified for customers deploying Lync environments. OSN is currently one of only a handful of companies in the world that has the Microsoft Lync 2013 qualification, with TLS and SRTP security designation.

PanTerra Networks

www.panterranetworks.com

PanTerra Networks is the leading provider of secure unified cloud services for mid-market enterprises. The company's WorldSmart service provides CloudUC for business voice, UC, collaboration, conferencing, video and web meetings. It also includes SmartBox, for file sharing that communicates, shares and seamlessly integrated with all services. It has mobility, with simplified smartphones and tablet applications and browser-based interfaces for all services. In addition to its cloud-based delivery, WorldSmart leverages a single browser interface for all usage and administration, eliminating any on-premises deployed hardware or software, and also includes applications for smartphones and tablets for complete mobility. WorldSmart can be self-managed or fully managed by PanTerra Networks through its SentraCloud solution. SentraCloud provides a fully managed solution for larger enterprises interested in obtaining all the benefits of outsourcing their IT services to PanTerra.

Parallels

www.parallels.com

Parallels Automation for Hosted PBX is a platform for cloud providers to deliver hosted BroadWorks PBX services from BroadSoft. Based on Parallels Automation cloud service delivery platform, this solution gives cloud providers of any size the ability to launch hosted PBX services bundled with business e-mail, instant messaging, and other related services, and sold direct or through reseller channels. Because the service is delivered using Parallels Automation, cloud providers completely automate the service delivery experience from order to cash with no drop-out. Parallels has simplified the delivery of these complimentary services so that cloud providers can bundle wholesale services enabled by preferred Parallels partners, or choose to add them in their own data center environment. Either way, cloud providers will shorten their time to market from months to weeks with the experienced team from Parallels.

RiverMeadow Software

www.rivermeadow.com

Migrating workloads can be a risky, time consuming and costly process whether you're doing it manually or with solutions that don't offer a fully automated as-is approach. Often workloads need to be migrated one at a time, have to be taken out of production (disrupting business and productivity) and involve highly skilled resources – not to mention compliance and security compromises that can arise from installing software agents or shipping workloads offsite to third parties to replatform and deploy. RiverMeadow SaaS enables fast, secure and automated cloud onboarding from any source to any cloud destination. RiverMeadow SaaS automates the migration process of any physical, virtualized or cloud resident server and securely transits and deposits them into a destination cloud, irrespective of physical, hypervisor or cloud constraints. RiverMeadow executes migrations without installing an agent on the source or target, and without disrupting the source server e.g. shutdown or reboot. Purpose-built for the cloud, RiverMeadow provides on-demand scale-out to facilitate massive amounts of parallel migrations. The automation and scalability features dramatically reduce time and costs associated with migrations, especially large, complex projects.

ShoreTel

www.shoretel.com/solutions/cloud_services

ShoreTel Sky Contact Center is fully integrated with the ShoreTel Sky enterprise phone service. Any user profile can have a hosted contact center agent license added to it, allowing any employee to become part of the contact center. Capabilities include out-of-the-box integration with leading CRM applications, including Salesforce.com. Incoming calls automatically open records. Agent functions are embedded directly in the web application, enabling agents to transfer calls and screens to other agents. Built-in call recording includes agent evaluation forms to track performance. Prioritized skill routing assigns priority by queue and by agent – maximizing routing flexibility. Each queue can have separate service levels, hold treatment (music, announcements, estimated wait time, position in queue, or ringing), and routing algorithm for finding available agents (round robin, fewest calls, or most idle). Agent features include whisper announcements, screen pop, and click-to-dial. Supervisors have web access to all administrative functions, including live dashboards, reports, and configuration. Real-time dashboards include current ACD activity (connected, queued, abandoned, and available agent counts) as well as current status by agent.  Web reports are configurable by queue and date range. Call detail can be searched by queue, agent, direction, caller ID, recorded flag, duration, and date/time range.

SkyCreek Corp.

www.skycreek.com

SkyCreek, a multi-channel cloud contact provider specializing in front-line customer interactions, offers an array of capabilities including appointment reminders, preemptive service notifications, post transaction surveys and sentiment analysis of employee-customer interactions. At the heart of its custom IVR, SMS and e-mail contact management solutions is the cloud contact application, Interact. Interact is a full-stack contact management platform that is fully redundant, operating out of two geographically dispersed calling centers in Chicago and Reston, Va., and is fully SSAE-16 compliant, with a record of 99.9999 percent uptime. SkyCreek assigns a dedicated account manager to every client contact program it supports, each averaging more than 15 years of contact management experience. It says that allows SkyCreek to offer quality customer service; highly responsive change management; and to ensure that customer contact programs are optimized for performance, cost efficiency and overall quality. It also offers pay-per-result pricing and service level agreements on contracts.

SoftWatch

www.softwatch.com

SoftWatch provides a SaaS-based solution that helps enterprises manage and optimize their transition to a cloud-based environment. Unlike other

software metering tools, which detect whether an application is running, its patent-pending technology detects to what extent employees are actually interacting with the application. Based on the actual usage, the service provides user segmentation to light and heavy users for both on-premises and web-based apps. This unique capability serves multiple IT needs such as transitioning from on-premises applications such as MS Office to cloud-based applications like Google (News - Alert) Apps and Office 365, reducing software license costs, optimizing license purchasing, and ensuring compliance. In addition, the analytics provided by SoftWatch give CIOs the data they need to transform their end user computing environments with a flexible and cost-effective hybrid cloud architecture accommodating different needs of different users at optimal cost. A SoftWatch study of more than 150,000 enterprise users showed that on average an employee only spends 48 minutes a day on MS Office applications, indicating that with the right information, enterprises can save substantially on licenses by transitioning to cloud-based solutions. 

Spanlink (News - Alert) Communications Inc.

www.spanlink.com

Spanlink’s portfolio of Cisco-powered cloud services span the entire Cisco Collaboration portfolio. With Spanlink Cloud Services, organizations gain affordable access to the latest business voice, HD video, contact center technologies and managed services – all in a predictable monthly subscription. Spanlink’s Cloud Services Portfolio includes unified communications as a service, including voice over IP, voice messaging, instant messaging, presence, and desktop and mobile telepresence. The Spanlink Contact Center as a Service allows organizations to provide better, secure, and flexible customer service. It empowers customers to interact with businesses through the communication channel of their choice. It allows businesses to expand or tailor contact center feature capabilities as needed, such as speech analytics, reporting, intelligent call routing and quality monitoring tools. And it allows for the ramp-up and scale down of agent capacity as needed. TelePresence as a Service, meanwhile, allows access to HD business video capabilities from SIP- and H.323-compliant video endpoints. And it has multipoint functionality that allows three or more parties to dial into secure rendezvous rooms. Spanlink’s OnGuard as a Service is a 24x7 managed services platform that offers monitoring, management and maintenance support of Cisco UC and Contact Center solutions.

Telax Hosted Call Center

www.telax.com

Telax Hosted Call Center provides the capabilities for its clients to create exceptional customer experiences by combining the software and services its clients require into one firm-fixed monthly fee. By leveraging a native cloud computing architecture, Telax delivers an advanced contact center solution with more functionality than traditional hardware at a fraction of the cost. Telax clients get a customizable, easy-to-use solution that delivers responsive, full-service technical and operational support and includes best practice consulting and no long-term contracts. By simplifying the number of vendors its clients require in the customer care supply chain, Telax Hosted Call Center enables clients to provide the best service to their customers, valuable business intelligence to their executives, and a user friendly solution for their agents.

Telesphere

www.telesphere.com

Telesphere has built its own private MPLS IP network, one of the largest of its kind in the nation with 16 POPs, to deliver Telesphere’s hosted VoIP and other UCaaS services. In addition to voice services, hosted PBX with private SIP trunking, Telesphere offers a full portfolio of advanced communication services, including advanced contact center, web collaboration and mobile integration. All services are delivered on Telesphere’s IP MPLS backbone ensuring the highest quality of service and security. The company’s flagship UC products include Hosted PBX, Mobile Connect, Hosted Contact Center, Cloud Storage, Hosted Call Recording, VideoConnect, WebConnect, Speak2Dial, and VisualVoicemail. Related products include FaxMail, MPLS WAN, Internet Access, and CRM Integration. Telesphere’s MobileConnect is a softphone that works on PC and Mac devices, tablets and smartphones. It includes presence management, MS Outlook calendar integration, IM, voice/video calling, file sharing, and collaboration features such as group chat and desktop sharing. Telesphere’s contact center solution offers call queuing, call routing and IVR, and supports multimedia queuing, voice, video, chat, and screen recording. Advanced Contact Center supports social channel integration and monitoring, multi-channel/skills-based routing and customer support, all as an integrated bundle or ala carte.   

Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division

www.Telecom.Toshiba.com

Toshiba’s VIPedge cloud-based business telephone solution gives users the advantages of Toshiba’s IPedge business telephone system in the cloud. Users pay a monthly service fee – scalable to meet system size and usage needs – as an alternative to the capital purchase of an on-premises telephone system. Competitively priced, VIPedge accommodates up to 500 users in single or multi-site deployments. VIPedge can network with Toshiba’s on-premises solutions, IPedge and Strata CIX, for a hybrid cloud and on-premises networked solution. Toshiba’s UCedge client brings unified communications to Android and Apple iOS-based smartphones and tablets and Windows and Mac OS X computers. UCedge works on Toshiba’s VIPedge and IPedge business phone solutions as well as Strata CIX systems with an IPedge Application Server. With client software that is easily downloaded from the Internet, users gain new levels of convenience, productivity, mobility and cost savings, regardless of how they access their Toshiba phone systems. UCedge puts your desktop business phone in your pocket by turning your Android or Apple iOS smartphones or tablets into multimedia office productivity tools. 

Verizon

www.verizonenterprise.com

Verizon’s UC&C solutions provide a cost-effective way to connect employees to co-workers, customers, and company information. VoIP integrates voice and data traffic; audio and videoconferencing can enhance teamwork and improve response times; and cloud-based applications make access easy so no special equipment is required and customers can quickly scale to meet changing needs.

VoIP Logic

www.voiplogic.com

VoIP Logic provides hosted PBX technology platform as a service exclusively to service providers. By unbundling all elements including carrier services, the company allows service providers to retain full flexibility in how they package their services to their targeted enterprise customers and to control their cost basis of all packaged services. For operators that want to engage fully in tier 1 enterprise support, want to bundle telephony with other cloud services, and want to exercise full ownership over their customer base, our version of PaaS accomplishes this while providing the most robust platform elements by recognized leading manufacturers like BroadSoft, Oracle Communications (Acme Packet), GENBAND, and Cisco.VoIP Logic welcomes third-party technology as platform add-ons and maintains an active ecosystem of partners that provide integration, OSS and billing. In addition, it provides a proprietary utility system called Cortex OSS that allows bulk provisioning, user management, group management, license reconciliation and access to CDR and logs.

Vonage Business Solutions

www.vonagebusiness.com

As companies move to business VoIP phone solutions in record numbers – and away from limited copper-wire solutions – Vonage Business Solutions has quickly become the fastest-growing provider of hosted VoIP communications for business. With more than 40 calling features built in, and a suite of mission-critical add-on features, the VBS solution empowers small- to mid-sized businesses to sell more and better serve customers. The system is fully mobile, with mobile apps for iOS and Android, and aligns with many of the business tools employees already use. Supporting the system is a full team of customer and technical service representatives working onsite at VBS headquarters in Atlanta. Vonage Business Solutions utilizes its own technology, including a proprietary cloud platform that is stable, secure, and proven. The system maintains 99.999 percent uptime reliability, and its patent-pending Call Continuity feature allows continuous service even through events such as loss of power or Internet. VBS customers regularly save at least 30 percent over traditional providers with no annual contracts required. Vonage Business Solutions was founded in 2006 as Vocalocity Inc. and acquired by Vonage in 2013.

Voxox

www.voxox.com

Voxox is an award-winning unified communications provider. The company’s hosted PBX offering empowers SMBs with scalable communication features at a very competitive price. With Voxox’s Hosted PBX, only the phones are located on premises. The costs and responsibility of maintaining and supporting the phone system are handled remotely by Voxox. Voxox’s Hosted PBX saves companies money thanks to its pricing model: Voxox simply charges a nominal fee per extension and then adds as many metered or unlimited channels (lines) as the business needs. Most competitors require the customer to get a line for every extension. Another hosted offering from Voxox is its virtual PBX service, Cloud Phone. While the Hosted PBX solution caters to businesses with physical locations, Cloud Phone offers extra mobility to small businesses on the go. The web-based service provides a dedicated business telephone number (toll free or local) that can be routed to any existing mobile or landline phone. The caller is greeted by an auto-attendant and can be routed to other employees worldwide via a three-digit extension. Other features include voicemail transcription, web callback, and more. Cloud Phone can be easily transitioned into an advanced VoIP system that supports hundreds of phones and multiple office locations.

West IP Communications

www.westipc.com

West offers a broad range of communication and network infrastructure solutions that help manage or support essential communications. West’s services include conferencing and collaboration, public safety services, IP communications, interactive services such as automated notifications, large-scale agent services, and telecom services. West appears in the leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, multiregional, this year, making it now three years in a row.

XO Communications

www.xo.com

XO Contact Center on Demand is a cloud-based, virtual contact center solution that allows organizations to provide a more consistent, seamless and comprehensive customer experience that enriches satisfaction and builds loyalty while minimizing capital expense and reducing operational costs. With this solution, companies can reduce infrastructure costs, gain more flexibility and control over customer service operations, and better engage and interact with customers. XO Communications backs this up with its experience in hosted voice solutions and its own high-capacity nationwide network. With Contact Center on Demand, organizations eliminate the need to make any further investments in contact center equipment to support each agent and location. Instead, users enjoy simple, pay-as-you-go pricing per user. Without having to buy new equipment and systems, users can quickly add resources where and when they need them to support spikes in business operations or to help meet special project demands. They pay only for the resources they need, when they need them. XO Contact Center on Demand is designed to complement other XO VoIP services including XO IP Flex, XO IP Flex with VPN, Enterprise SIP, Interactive Voice Response and Hosted PBX.

Yorktel

www.yorktel.com

In business for more than 29 years, Yorktel has built its name as an AV integrator. As its expertise grew along with the trends in the video communications marketplace, Yorktel has evolved to meet the demand for video managed services, cloud services, and unified communications and collaboration. As a cloud, UCC and video managed services provider, Yorktel offers a single source solution for unified and visual communications. Its services include professional consulting, through assessment, design and implementation. This complements its post implementation offerings: Managed Services (maintenance, troubleshooting, scheduling/launching, and on site staffing) and VideoCloud VaaS (public, private and hybrid options; self-service or managed). It recently expanded into verticalized applications, including the Yorktel VideoKiosk, mobile TeleHealth carts, and iRobot’s Ava500.

Zeacom/Enghouse

http://enghouseinteractive.com/products.php

Enghouse Interactive’s Contact Center: Enterprise (formerly Syntellect (News - Alert) CIM) is an adaptable, multi-channel platform. It provides flexible deployment options, on-premises, distributed across multiple sites or on a public cloud infrastructure. That includes private cloud, an on-premises deployment with the flexibility to centralize or distribute components across multiple sites; virtual private cloud, leverages a cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (i.e. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) environment to create an isolated and private section of the cloud; and hybrid cloud, which connects on-premises and public cloud Contact Center: Enterprise components, and other applications. Meanwhile, Zeacom Communications Center 7.0 features TouchPoint, a redesigned user interface for agents and supervisors, new campaign tools for Microsoft Lync users, and enhanced redundancy options. TouchPoint features a minimalist interface to encourage collaboration both inside and outside the contact center, and improve first-contact resolution. TouchPoint provides real-time information and context-aware functionality. Its lean, compact nature prevents desktop clutter for users who also work in CRM, other business applications. Also new is Outdial for Lync, which allows outbound campaigns, such as collections, outbound sales campaigns, appointment reminders; and ZCC Survey, which enables managers to capture customer feedback on email & web chat-based agent interactions, and voice automation.

Zultys

www.zultys.com

Zultys Inc. presents MXvirtual, a fully integrated cloud-based unified communication solution. It integrates voice, video, data and mobility to optimize collaboration and communications for businesses of all sizes, and includes all the advanced features of the Zultys premises-based system including the Zultys Integrated Contact Center solution. Zultys’ Integrated Contact Center software intelligently processes incoming calls to groups of agents based on administrator-defined rules and real-time conditions. When there are more callers than available agents, the system will either re-route callers or queue callers with customized in-queue messages and music that may be unique for each call group. Agents can be located anywhere in the world, allowing for flexibility and around the clock coverage, without the need to relocate key talent. Built-in SuperView software allows contact center supervisors to monitor real-time call statistics for multiple call groups, as well as easily manage agents and calls with the ability to barge-in, silent monitor, or whisper-thru to an agent on call. And for the supervisor’s convenience all these functions can be accessed from a single SuperView window.

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