More UC services offered in the cloud

This year, Australian carriers and service providers have responded to prevailing market conditions, by offering hosted telephony/unified communication services.

This week, Integ launched a hosted conferencing solution which is set to cut costs for Australian organisations. The iTaaS Conference Centre enables audio, web and video conferencing with no per-minute charging and a strong ROI. This means its software-as-a-service system enables organisations to conference via audio, web and video from virtually any location, at any time.

Unlike traditional conference providers that typically charge per minute, per participant, with Conference Centre an organisation pays a one-time set-up fee and a monthly subscription. The subscription is for one year with a reduction in rates for longer periods. The fee is based on the number of participants that may be included in a conference at any one time, along with the application packs chosen. There are no per-minute charges. Once the service is live, users can set up their own conferences at any time, invite participants and obtain their own usage reports for internal charging, with no additional costs.

According to Ian Poole, CEO of Integ Group, conference and collaboration technology is becoming increasingly popular as organisations identify new ways to reduce costs and boost productivity.

“At the moment, we see Australian organisations have two main focuses: managing costs and expenditure whilst simultaneously enabling their employees to be more productive and better meet customer needs. With iTaaS Conference Centre, organisations can collaborate in real time, regardless of where they are physically located. They can choose a simple teleconference, enhance it with web collaboration or add video to include remote offices and employees in face-to-face meetings without them having to travel.

“And with the software-as-a-service delivery model, conferencing is within reach of all organisations regardless of their telephone systems or data networks. Operational flexibility without capital expenditure,” said Poole.

“Hosted communication services have been around for many years, mainly servicing the small and medium enterprise (SME) market segment. However, hosted telephony/UC for the MLE market has re-emerged, offering a feature-rich environment that is potentially comparable to a CPE solution model,” said Gary Tsang, Telsyte’s Enterprise Communications Analyst.

“Carriers/service providers have reacted decisively to the current macro environment by offering a solution which offers the benefits of minimising CAPEX, transferring technological risks associated with major ICT investment, to incur costs in line with growth and to enable organisations to focus on their core business strategies.”