TMCnet Unified Communications Week in Review

Unified communications is leveraged by businesses and individuals alike in order to interact at a much higher level with virtually anyone at anytime, anywhere. This next generation suite can reduce costs while connecting geographically disparate workforces and help increase project completion time, productivity and efficiency overall.

This week, it was revealed that the UC space continues to expand, and in 2012, additional capabilities were added to the robust suite. These functions that already existed were significantly strengthened, including video conferencing, mobility, presence and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

In order for companies to leverage these services while still sticking to their strict budgets, UC is needed. This is because the next generation system is now required by mobile workforces who wish to remain productive while on-the-go, in addition to companies whose workforces can work in a highly efficient manner while mobile for a cost-effective price. With mobile over-the-top (OTT) VoIP increasing in popularity throughout the months, it is estimated that nearly one billion users will be utilizing this offering by 2017. This number equates to nearly a third of all mobile device users.

Teo is touted as a company that has “reinvented UC,” enabling global workforces to leverage a single application for all of their communications needs that can be accessed via the device of their choosing.

“We believe our work life communications should be more powerful than our personal communications tools, because the more we accomplish during our work day the more flexibility and freedom we enjoy in our personal lives,” the company’s website declares. What does this mean to the end-user exactly? Having a unified back-end infrastructure in place that is simple to use, easy to manage and alleviates most of the pressure put upon the shoulders of IT departments.

In other news, Ipanema Technologies formed a strategic alliance this week with Polycom (News - Alert). This partnership will serve in assisting companies in driving visibility within various applications being powered throughout their networks.

Béatrice Piquer-Durand, vice-president of marketing for Ipanema (News - Alert) Technologies, commented, “We are pleased to work with Polycom to provide Application Performance Guarantee solutions. As the importance of unified communications and collaboration continues to grow, companies need assurance that they’ll receive consistently high-quality video and voice. We’re excited that this partnership will fully ensure that UC&C will be delivered smoothly and appropriately over the customer’s network, helping to enhance business success and ensure a consistent user experience.”

Not only will this collaborative effort lead to priorities and resources over the corporate network being improved in terms of performance, but automated application visibility, QoS and control, WAN optimization and dynamic WAN selection will also be dramatically enhanced.

Closing out the week, it was revealed that Cisco (News - Alert) Prime Collaboration 9.0 would be making its official debut in April. For those users out there who wish to leverage the offering, they must first shell out a significant chunk of change and buy the Prime Assured Subscription Service (PASS).

Several newly added capabilities within this solution include: alarms with a new correlation engine, a self-care provisioning module, VMs for Assurance and Provisioning for up to 10,000 endpoints, full support for up to 150,000 endpoints, an easy-to-use graphical user interface and software images delivered as Linux .OVA.

For all of the most vital breaking news in the industry, be sure to stay tuned to the unified communications Community, exclusively on TMCnet!

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