Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is giving its multinational business customers more options to get its Unified Communications and Collaboration as a Service (UCCaaS) solution by extending the service into Europe and Asia-Pacific while adding Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms to its portfolio.
From a regional perspective, Verizon will now offer in-country UCCaaS support in major European and Asia-Pacific commercial business in hubs such as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Germany, France and the Netherlands.
An added feature is that the company provides in-region geographic redundancy of its UCCaaS services via its data centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Offering collaboration services capabilities for intra-business, B2B and B2C applications from any standards-based video device, the Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms Cloud allows attendees to collaborate using voice, video, content share and white boarding.
Verizon said it expects the collaboration meeting room cloud service to be commercially available in July and it will integrate with Verizon UCCaaS or can be purchased as a stand-alone service. Playing into the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, attendees can join a collaboration room from a video device--laptop, tablet, smartphone, desktop, video room system or telepresence room system.
Finally, the integrated global contact centers, which it said will be available in the second half of this year, will deliver cloud-based contact center capabilities for improving the customer experience and can be integrated with UCCaaS. Cloud-based contact centers allow enterprises to serve their customers in what Verizon claims is a more cost-effective manner, with the ability to easily scale resources up or down based on business needs.
Besides offering a host of new collaboration services, Verizon said the new solution also addresses large businesses' security concerns because it is built with layered security and natively integrates into Verizon's Conferencing, global MPLS network (Verizon Private IP) and Verizon IP Trunking services.
IDC said that it expects cloud-based UC could provide some definite benefits to large businesses and multinational corporations that have been traditionally embraced by SMBs.
"Cloud unified communications (UC) is no longer just for the small business; today, large enterprises and multinational corporations are embracing the strategic value of cloud UC, and they require global reach, a broad array of collaboration functionality and perhaps most of all, a strategic partner who can complement their own operational teams as they drive business transformation," said Amy Lind, research manager with IDC, in a release. "Verizon's expansion of its UC&C capabilities, paired with its worldwide support and professional services reach, makes them a compelling partner for enterprises to consider."
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