Cloud-based UC Provider PanTerra Goes 100-percent Browser Based

Chang: PanTerra is not only the service provider, we're the technology provider. Many of these service providers that have cropped up today don't own technology; they're just reselling others' technology. They might be reselling Microsoft OCS. They might be reselling Cisco UC 500 call manager or WebEx. We have developed the technology, through the use of our own proprietary technology, and the use of open source standards, and through some judicious use of third-party software as well. We combine this all together to deliver this very tightly coupled unified communications platform.

 

Why do businesses need UC? Chang: If you are able to unify your communications you can save in costs, capital expense, as well as ongoing communications monthly expense. You can increase productivity. And a lot of people talk about not just increasing productivity but increasing information access quickly - like the ability to quickly identify the sales expert in your company and instantly get access to [that person] instead of going through the traditional slow means of getting access to [that individual].

 

Why should businesses go with PanTerra's UC solution? Chang: Today UC is really delivered by essentially cobbling together a bunch of single-solution communications services. I might use WebEx for my collaboration. I might use maybe Covad or AT&T for my voice. And I'm using somebody else, maybe Five9, for my call center service. And that really has tremendous limitations. There are cost limitations. There are deployment limitations, administration limitations. If you can imagine a company that had to, for example, deploy 300 e-mail log-ins and 300 WebEx log-ins and 300 Five9's call center queue agent log-ins and manage all those, [that company would] be managing over a thousand different logins. So those are kind of limitations you see in today's kind of solutions.

 

What WorldSmart does is really offers a complete, cloud-based unified communications solution, whether it be collaboration services such as Web meeting and desktop share, or even remote access to your desktop or call center services or ... integrated voice, or fax, or e-mail. They're all integrated together, built on top of a presence engine that can simultaneously show the presence of each user regardless of what location [he or she is] in and provide work groups that you can quickly identify, for example, within your location - regardless of location. There's no on-premises hardware to deploy. It's run on existing bandwidth, existing networks that have already been deployed, and so it cuts down significantly on IT infrastructure, and on IT management, especially in multi-location organizations.

 

You indicated automatic translation is an important feature offered by PanTerra. Tell us about it. Chang: It provides tremendous productivity gains because everything is at your fingertips. We use this concept 'communications at your fingertips.' By providing all this at your fingertips we can provide automatic translation. So, for example, if you're not at your desktop and somebody in the organization needs to get ahold of you, and they don't know your cell phone number but they start texting you, or they send you an instant message but you're not at your desktop, our system will detect you're not at your desktop and automatically translate that instant message to a text message and let it come to your phone. And when you reply on your phone, it'll automatically be translated back to the original media, which is an instant message, and will land back at the person's instant message portal. And they'll never know that it got translated. So both sides see a very fast means of communications that's completely transparent. So that's a key benefit when you're providing all the unified communications services together.

 

Chang: We really try to simplify the complexity of deploying communications in multi-location environments and lower the total cost of ownership, which is not only the capital expense of trying to run complex communications in organizations, but it's also the ongoing expense, the monthly expense. We reduce your communications bills. We consolidate communications bills. And we allow you, the company, to manage these through standard browser portals.

 

The other key aspect to our product line is our future-proof communications guarantee. [That is], essentially, no matter how large your organization gets, no matter how many locations get added or employees get added, we guarantee infinite scaling. We guarantee that all updates and new features for that particular level of service are delivered automatically with no cost whatsoever. And you get support for life. One of the key things about our support is we provide 24x7, 365 days a year, instant support. At the click of the mouse you can get access to a support person, and they will respond within 30 seconds. No longer does a business have to get into a call queue and be put on hold for hours on end. It simplifies our life, because we can handle multiple instant messaging support issues. A lot of times people say 'I lost my password. Or, can you reset my password?' So a single support person can handle 15 support situations in parallel. So it lowers our costs, improves customer satisfaction significantly, and I think it's proof again how unified communications really can permeate and improve productivity within businesses, including our own.

 

Chang: We really built the platform from the ground up to be a multiservice SaaS platform. We didn't start, for example, with a softswitch. A softswitch is just one of our services. And this multiservice SaaS platform can truly scale. We're agnostic to bandwidth. We're agnostic to carriers. All of our services run on homogenous Linux blade servers, including all the back-end services - all the billing, the provisioning, everything is on identical blade servers, which allows us to scale much more effectively than older generation, hardware-specific telecom platforms.

 

Chang: These older generation companies were really infrastructure-burdened. They built the infrastructure, they owned the infrastructure, which at first started out being an advantage because they had the only infrastructure. And if you wanted to get voice communications, the only way you got it was through AT&T's PSTN lines. The problem now is that infrastructure has become a burden because now there are many alternatives, there are many paths, to transporting communications.

 

Does this talking point mean you view AT&T and the other telcos as your key competitors? Chang: Not so much for the infrastructure part. But AT&T, like many of these infrastructure players, they're trying to find value-added services to offer their customers because they know that's where the market's going. That's where the future is.

 

While AT&T has tried some of these single-solution services, like a BroadSoft platform for example, we view AT&T as a potential partner as they try to get into the unified communications solutions. We think we'll deliver much more value for them. But they still have those infrastructure burdens that they'll have to deal with.

 

In addition, a lot of these telecom companies were really on-premises hardware oriented. It was like, deliver a piece of hardware called a PBX or a piece of hardware called a call center. So that was also kind of going-away technology as people move to cloud-based architectures.

 

The bottom line is even the philosophy of telecom companies of the past is really different from PanTerra's. Prior telecom companies really were all about connecting A to B and really just getting out of the way and letting the bits move from A to B.

 

What we're really all about is intelligently processing, storing and searching communications bits. We allow you to store all your communications up in the cloud and process them, retrieve them, search them, act on them, and that's really value. That's the high-value difference between PanTerra and the older generation telecom companies.

 

Chang: We have a small number of direct sales people; the total company number is under 100. We'll always have a direct sales force because it keeps us close to customers, No. 1. It also allows us direct access to beta testers for new generation features.

 

We think that direct sales will always be a piece, a portion and a percentage of our total revenue. It probably will be a slightly higher percentage in the short run and slowly decline over time as the network of value-added resellers increases and productivity increases.

 

We have always believed the indirect channel is the volume deliverer of this stuff.

 

Chang: WorldSmart 4.0 attaches now to our 100 percent cloud-based deployed back end. It now provides a 100 percent browser-based user UC client front end. So now you can get access to all your communication in the cloud with just a broadband connection and a browser.

 

You don't need to download any software on your client. That means administrators at companies don't have to manage any downloaded piece of software, or deal with security issues of a downloaded piece of software, or deployment issues of a downloaded piece of software. That means you can now get your communications identically on Windows machines, Macs, Linux machines, smartphones, Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome.

 

All you need is the broadband connection and a browser. And that's powerful. And we're the first, we believe, in the market to do this.

 

Also new with WorldSmart 4.0 is a multicolumn IM interface, allowing users to see a large number of contacts and applications as they expand their screens, correct?

Chang: Yes. It's completely new with this release.

With this you can open up different microbrowsers within the browser and check voicemail, compose an e-mail, send an e-mail, send an IM, set up a desktop conference, share your desktop. Everything can be done in this unified command center.