Tata Sees Growth for Hosted UC

By Tara Seals
TMCnet Contributor

Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync (now Skype for Business), Cisco and WebRTC are all adding momentum to Tata Communications’ hosted unified communications efforts. The provider has seen a 30 percent growth rate in the space as it continues to expand its portfolio.

Tata offers wholesale and white-label services for carriers that cater to small and medium-sized businesses, and targets large, multinational corporations under its own brand. It’s been beefing up its portfolio lately, with three big product launches last month. It’s also a global carrier partner for Microsoft’s Skype (News - Alert) for Business/Lync services.

The carrier has added InstaCC Global, Hosted Lync and Click2RTC to its UC portfolio, bringing together multiple technology platforms to provide integrated voice, video, chat and presence capabilities delivered through the cloud. For its carrier partners, it has opened them up via APIs and software development kits (SDKs) as well.

According to Anthony Bartolo, president of mobility and collaboration at Tata Communications (News - Alert), its UC-as-a-service (UCaaS) via the Microsoft Lync platform is a game-changer for the company. End users and carrier customers alike can build a compelling UC strategy by combining the hosted Lync service with other offerings from Tata Communications’ UC portfolio, like Global SIP Connect and Jamvee, Tata’s audio, video and Web conferencing service.

“As businesses grow and expand domestically and internationally, they need a sophisticated way to manage their communications and collaboration,” Bartolo said. “However, the ability to connect instantly is both a benefit and a challenge. Our approach to UC is to equip organizations with choice through the breadth and depth of our solutions and in-built interoperability to fully realize the potential of a connected world. We have created this approach in partnership with an incredible set of companies, allowing us best-in-class UCaaS cloud-based solutions to market for customers across the globe.”

Meanwhile, InstaCC Global is a solution for contact centers powered by Cisco’s (News - Alert) Hosted Collaboration Suite, enables a centralized approach to distributed services through Tata’s cloud-based Voice Portal service. Contact center operations may need to shift according to fluctuations in demand or regional conditions, and due to M&A activity.

Click2RTC (which stands for click to real-time communications) is a contextual cloud communications service that allows organizations to leverage WebRTC to natively embed voice, video, presence, chat and augmented reality into mobile sites, applications and Websites. It has a full suite of RTC APIs, Android (News - Alert)/iOS software development kits (SDKs), and comprehensive developer support for creating functions like click-to-video chat within customer service portals, or a presence monitor for bespoke field tech applications.

Bartolo said that video continues to be a hot item, and he expects a 16 percent CAGR for video over the next three years. That’s largely because UC has enabled more stakeholders throughout an organization to add video to their bouquet of communications options. “The user is now the endpoint who may be using a room, Mac, PC or iPad,” he said in a recent interview. “Video is being democratized.”

He also said that Tata execs “are huge fans of WebRTC” and that the company is “seeing it take off with carrier partners and larger enterprises.”