Unified Communications Featured Article

Vodafone's OneNet Services Overcome the UC Standardization Hurdles, Driving a Worldwide Adoption

By Madhubanti Rudra
TMCnet Contributor

When it comes to staying connected with the geographically dispersed team members or to responding to the queries of clients and prospects, businesses operating across multiple sites often encounter challenges.  An increasing number of multi-site companies today are using unified communications solutions to overcome these communication difficulties. Vodafone’s (News - Alert) OneNet Global Enterprise (VOGE) suit is one of the UC solutions that has received a significant amount of positive reviews from both businesses using it and industry commentators. The UK telecom giant maintained that standardization was key to the success of its One Net offerings, which is claimed to be currently used by some 3.5 million users worldwide.

A large number of customers are migrating from on-premise technology to cloud technology and Vodafone OneNet was created to complement these big changes. Vodafone reps claimed that VOGE was created to simplify work life from small to large businesses and end users. Based on a modular architecture, this cloud based solution integrates fixed and mobile communications through a single platform. It is designed to handle the communication and collaboration challenges of today’s businesses—big and small, the reps explained.

To this end, Vodafone OneNet has been provided with a number of intelligent features, which include everything from voicemail and messaging capabilities to video conferencing and contact center capabilities. Keeping pace with the evolving customer communication preferences, Vodafone OneNet has also been equipped with enterprise social media capabilities.

All these features allow for the integration of disparate businesses communications. An improved collaboration leads to increased productivity, ultimately leading to reduced costs. Based on modular architecture—with each module supported by a common set of service management tools—Vodafone OneNet also helps simplify the way your services are managed.

As a cloud service, it's hosted within Vodafone Global Enterprise hosting centers, ensuring a consistent user experience across sites and devices. All the tools are run on enterprise-grade hardware for business-critical availability. The platform combines Microsoft's Lync, Office 365 and Sharepoint applications and Cisco (News - Alert)'s UC services.

Thus, the solution allows you to enjoy all the benefits of traditional PBS, across multiple handsets. In short, it makes an end-to-end communication solution that can help streamline business processes.

As for example, it allows an employee to receive a call on fixed office phone number and then get it transferred the call to his/her  mobile phone, so that he/ she can continue with the call on the go.

The company reps pointed out that Vodafone OneNet allows for the integration of communications in the old fashioned PBS way, only all of the communications 

Happen inside the Vodafone network.

As the only operator in the world that has IMS integration with Cisco, Vodafone OneNet allows for the integration of its cloud telephony platform with Cisco's call manager and contact centre platforms. This enables the large enterprises to integrate the mobile network tightly into their Cisco's solution that work across mobile phones and contact centre services, creating a unique system of intertwined services.

The company reps revealed that Vodafone s planning to bring its OneNet services in the emerging marketing and expand its scope in partnership with Google apps, Huawei (News - Alert) and Genesis.