New UC One Launched By BroadSoft

A new unified communications platform for Service Providers has been launched by BroadSoft called UC One. Its design specifies a decrease in complexity and a simplicity through which service providers can provide UC solutions for all types of end users from larger enterprises to smaller businesses.

This is a time when service providers are seeking to push for greater growth in communications technologies, through voice, video, text and other collaboration tools, and the introduction of UC One is the latest in this line of progression. According to Michael Tessler, the CEO of BroadSoft, one struggle has been the difficulty in providing a variety of solutions not simply as separate entities, but in a more incorporative way.

Tessler said, "While enterprises have stated a clear desire for service providers to extend their core offering beyond voice, many providers have been challenged by the complexity of trying to pull together multiple communications services into a single, market-ready offering. With UC One, service providers can deliver revenue-generating UC services from a single platform, in turn reimagining how end-users can interact and communicate across all devices and networks-from anywhere and at any time."

"UC One demonstrates that Broadsoft understands the need of the enterprise, the company's solutions are already well received in SMB. Now with consumer, SMB, and enterprise offerings, the company is poised to deliver the cloud to the world." Said Dave Michels, a UCStrategies expert who attended the launch event.

An Infonetics Research survey showed that enterprise plans for UC were influenced heavily by the difficulty in delivering unified communications technologies, not only cost concerns. Company officials stated that many aspects of UC continue to be treated separately, and this disparateness is proving problematic; solutions need to be brought together and integrated.

Mobile device integration, for example, is perceived to be very important by 71 percent of respondents. As industry trends progress in mobile computing, BYOD and remote workers, the significance of this increases. The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets also allows workers to be more flexible in how and where they work, and employees are keen to use their own devices in their work.

Greater productivity can certainly be achieved through the BYOD incentive, however, security issues need to be addressed as a greater number of smartphones and tablets, which are privately-owned, look to access corporate network and data. As this trend grows, businesses are forced to consider the issue, and according to Cisco, many executives persist in voicing reluctance.

Solutions which are well enough designed are essential if service providers are to serve businesses whose employees use a variety of devices. Officials at BroadSoft stated that an integral component of UC One is its incorporation of differing mobile networks like 2G, 3G and 4G into its UC platform. Users can access all UC services via a variety of devices ranging from the traditional desk phone and laptops to smartphones and tablets.

Furthermore, UC solutions such as voice, video and online collaboration to instant messaging and presence can now easily be distributed to enterprises by service providers. According to officials and BroadSoft, all of these solutions work on a single interface, and can be used on any mobile device.

The UC One platform also pushes BroadSoft's Xtended technology to the limelight, and this can also be used in conjunction with (both interoperating and integrating with) third-party solutions, devices and systems. Solutions can therefore be more customizable towards meeting customer needs.

Packaged communications solutions will also be available via service providers to enterprise through the BroadSoft UC platform, particularly those suited to address the needs of specific customer segments. (CY) Link