Unified Communications Week in Review

Unified Communications (News - Alert) systems keep employees and employers connected and businesses running almost seamlessly. A UC system in place can transform a company and build a strong foundation in order to strive toward future mergers, or even awards and astounding success. This week in Unified Communications has been fruitful in the aspect of partnerships, awards and new UC system features being released.

Supplier of chemical and biological pharmaceutical ingredients to the pharmaceutical, life science and healthcare industries, Lonza, has renewed and expanded on its existing contract with Orange (News - Alert) Business Services.  Ernst Hutter, head of Global IT-Infrastructure Services, at Lonza, emphasized the effectiveness of the use of Orange Business Services by stating, “Orange Business Services is providing us a solution that is risk-free in terms of business continuity, allowing us to react quickly to business needs.” The existing contract between Lonza and Orange Business Services has been extended for four more years, while also implementing a UC and collaboration solution to connect the more than 11,000 staff members around the world, further enabling Lonza to remain connected and operating efficiently.

Deloitte (News - Alert) LLP has named Vocalocity, a Vonage company that provides hosted VoIP phone systems to small businesses in the U.S. and Canada, to its Technology Fast 500 list. Vocalocity (News - Alert) ranked 188th out of the 500 companies that are considered to be the fastest growing technology, media telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America, and this is the third year in the row Vocalocity has made this list. Vocalocity made UC headlines a second time this week by launching new mobile and desktop applications as well as Salesforce.com and call history plugins. “Customers are the lifeblood of every business, and it is important that a business’s phone system – the conduit to its lifeblood – is built with features that keep customer relationships going strong,” stated Wain Kellum, former CEO of Vocalocity and now president of Vonage (News - Alert) Business Solutions in response to these new Vocalocity features. “We continuously listen to the needs and wants of our customers, and we strategically build and deliver solutions that directly address their demands and the pain points of the business industry.”

Another UC services company, PanTerra Networks, has released new features in order to better deliver a more effective UC system to businesses. The new features will enhance security while cutting down on the number of security applications users need to have in place. Bill Sutherland, president and CEO of Sutherland Networks as well as PanTerra customer, commented on the release by stating, “PanTerra's Admin 5.0 cut our administrative overhead considerably on our most recent multi-location customer migration off of legacy equipment.”

Another week in Unified Communications, another week of promising innovation and progress. Check back with TMCnet next week for another great week of insight and breaking news in the UC industry!