NextPlane
Invites Companies to Join the Growing Community of UC Exchange
Members with Free Directory Listing and Federation Services.
SUNNYVALE,
Calif. (October 18, 2012) -- NextPlane,
Inc., the market leader in cloud-based federation
services for unified communications (UC), today announced UC
Exchange, the next step in building real-time collaborative business
communities for UC platforms. UC Exchange is a UC federation service
with a searchable directory of more than 100 (and growing)
federation-ready organizations where companies can easily federate
with customers and partners using a secure management portal. Since
UC Exchange is a cloud-based service there is no additional hardware
or software required to participate.
Today,
more than ever, companies need to put customers and partners at the
heart of their business. With the NextPlane UC Exchange service,
enterprises are able to break their organizational boundaries and
connect with their business partner ecosystem in real time to
increase efficiency, productivity, and gain a competitive advantage.
UC Exchange improves real-time collaboration with such features as
searchable directories, UC-to-Skype federation, UC-to-social media
federation, and a secure management portal.
UC
Exchange already serves more than several hundred thousand users from
global organizations spanning education, manufacturing, supply chain,
pharmaceuticals and health services, telecommunications,
transportation, and technology. UC Exchange users currently exchange
billions of presence, chat, voice and video messages per month with
business colleagues within their ecosystems.
"The
benefits of unified and social communications are maximized within
those enterprises that extend their solutions across their end users,
partners, customers, and suppliers. However, in many organizations,
UC and social media platforms remain isolated islands of
communication with an inward focus," said Bill Haskins, Senior
Analyst with Wainhouse Research. "NextPlane's UC Exchange marks
a major step in breaking down communication barriers between
organizations, and enabling users of UC and social media to
participate in secure, federated, and collaborative business
communities."
Key
features of UC Exchange include:
-
UC Federation Services - enables any organization to
seamlessly federate across Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Google, OpenFire,
Isode, and eJabberd platforms.
-
Secure Management Portal - allows searching the Members
Directory for federation-ready partners, managing federation
requests, and accessing usage reports.
-
Directory Services (Available December 2012) - provides a
searchable "phone book" of validated contact information
based on employee profiles received from contributing members.
-
Microsoft Lync and OCS to Skype Federation - enables end-users
to call users on Skype from their Microsoft Lync or OCS client.
-
Google to Skype Federation (Available December 2012) - enables
end-users to call users on Skype from their Google client.
-
Voice Conferencing Federation - enables end-users on Microsoft
Lync or OCS, to initiate conference calls and add colleagues on
Google or vice versa.
-
UC to Social Media Federation - enables end-users of Yammer,
Chatter and Twitter to authenticate with their social media accounts
and post to social media feeds, send private messages and participate
in group discussions, all from their UC client.
-
Microsoft Lync and OCS to XMPP Hosted Group Chat Federation -
enables Lync and OCS end-users to participate in group chat rooms
hosted on XMPP-based UC platforms.
"UC
Exchange accelerates building real-time collaborative business
communities, irrespective of the underlying UC and social media
solution being used," said Farzin Shahidi, founder and CEO of
NextPlane. "UC Exchange does this in two ways: First, we provide
a free directory service to allow organizations to easily find and
federate with their 'federation-ready' partners. Second, we offer
subscribing customers access to federation services and a searchable
directory where their end-users can search for the contact
information of their colleagues in partner organizations, directly
from their UC clients."
NextPlane
is offering UC Exchange membership at two levels:
Directory
Membership - Free membership that gives member organizations
access to the Management Portal, a listing in the Members Directory,
the ability to search for Federation-Ready partners, the ability to
accept inbound federation requests, free federation with Gmail.com,
and basic usage reports.
Community
Membership - Fee-based membership, which includes the ability to
make directory-driven outbound UC to UC federation requests,
user-level Directory Search, plus additional federation services such
as federation with Skype, Social Media federation (Yammer, Twitter
and Chatter) and XMPP Group Chat Federation. Community Members also
receive additional benefits such as policy enforcement, advanced
federation analytics and reporting, and 24/7 support with guaranteed
service levels. Annual subscription fees for Community Membership are
based on the number of users, domains, and federation features
required.
About
NextPlane
NextPlane
Inc., is the provider of 'UC Exchange,' a cloud based community
focused federation service for unified communications (UC). UC
Exchange enables member organizations to find, connect, and
collaborate with business partners across a wide range of UC
platforms and includes powerful features such as UC Federation
Services, centralized Members Directory, Social Media Federation, and
Skype Federation. Using a unique federation management portal,
organizations can search a member's directory for federation-ready
partners; manage federation requests and access reporting and
analytic tools.
UC
Exchange Federation Services enable seamless federation across
Microsoft Lync, OCS and LCS, Cisco Jabber XCP, Unified Presence
Server (CUPS) and WebEx Messenger (formerly Cisco WebEx Connect), IBM
Sametime, Google Apps, Jive OpenFire, Isode M-Link and eJabberd.
Organizations can connect users from different companies regardless
of their underlying UC platform - with enhanced presence, instant
messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video - all as if they are on
the same UC platform. Moreover, UC Exchange enables its member
organizations to federate their UC platforms with social business
communities such as Yammer, Salesforce.com's Chatter, Twitter, Skype,
LinkedIn, and XMPP hosted chat rooms.
Contact:
Farzin
Shahidi
NextPlane,
Inc.
(650)
305-7404
Tom
Woolf
Woolf
Media & Marketing
(415)
259-5638
