This Week in Telecom: September 15th
This Week in Telecom is a bi-weekly news round-up on VoipReview.org that aims to give our readers a fast and easy way to catch up on the latest news and top stories that are trending in the voice and telecommunications space. Check in each and every Friday to find out more about stories you may have missed in regards to new companies, mergers, trends, and other telecom advancements.
Here are the top news stories you might have missed this week:
Avaya Announces Global Availability of its New Cloud-Based Video Conferencing and Collaboration Service
Video conferencing has always been a powerful tool for connecting teams and key business stakeholders based in different locations. However, traditional systems have also proven to be too complicated and expensive to operate. Avaya, the global leader in superior enterprise communications services, seeks to transform how businesses used and perceived video conferencing with their latest offering. The provider recently unveiled the Avaya Equinox Meetings Online, a new cloud-based video conferencing and team collaboration service.
Available exclusively from Avaya channel partners in nearly 30 countries, Equinox Meetings Online provides an unparalleled meeting experience as it delivers crystal-clear wideband audio and video with up to 1080p video resolution. It provides support to the mobile workforce by enabling users (regardless of device or room system used) to connect easily. Users simply have to click on the meeting link to install the browser plug-in or app for one’s device to be able to join video meetings in the cloud. In addition to audio and video capabilities, Equinox Meetings Online offers content sharing as well as the ability to receive text chat on room systems.
“The global demand for easy to use video conferencing and collaboration capabilities has never been greater as employees, suppliers, and customers in distributed locations need to quickly come together,” Yogen Patel, Vice president and GM, Engagement Applications at Avaya, said in a release. “As a cloud-based service, Avaya Equinox Meetings Online delivers superb quality, simplicity and affordability, offering a great opportunity for our channel partners as well as their customers.”
To learn more about Avaya’s latest offering and how enterprises can tap its possibilities, please visit the Avaya website.
Nitel Introduces New Partner Program
Strategic alliances and partnerships can make or break a business. Once a business has found the right partners, it is crucial for them to nurture these relationships to ensure continuous growth and success. Nitel, a leading nationwide managed telecom service provider, understands this. And so they have developed a new partner program designed to help its valued partners amplify success.
Launched on Monday, the Elite Partner Program is open to Nitel’s top-performing master agents and distributors. These include AVANT, Converged Network Services Group, Intelisys, MicroCorp, PlanetOne Communications, Sandler Partners, Telarus and Telecom Consulting Group. Through this program, Nitel’s partners can gain access to dedicated partner support and business development resources, including market development fund accrual and channel director alignment for agents and channel partners in their local markets.
Rick Stern, CEO at Nitel, had this to say about their newest partner program:
“Building and nurturing a successful partner ecosystem is foundational to achieving exponential growth. Master agents and distribution partners play an increasingly important role in the pre- and post-sales and support efforts of today’s agents and MSPs. Our new Elite Partner Program, combined with the expansion of our channel and business development teams, will make it easier for our master agents and distributors to engage and ultimately enable our channel partners with the technology, insights and resources needed to capitalize on the growing demand for advanced technologies including SD-WAN.”
Visit Nitel’s website for more information on the Nitel Elite Partner Program or about the additional resources now offered to channel partners.
BlueJeans Completes Key Integrations with Technology Partners to Enable Simple, Seamless Video Meetings
BlueJeans Inc., a leading video meetings platform, maintains its commitment to give enterprises a simple and seamless video communications experience with its latest announcement. BlueJeans announced on Thursday that it has completed key integrations with industry-leading technology partners, Facebook and Samsung.
BlueJeans for Workplace by Facebook is now generally available to all BlueJeans customers after a highly successful beta program. The integration of BlueJeans with Workplace makes it possible to conduct interactive video meetings and deliver presentations via BlueJeans. It also lets users share content through Workplace and broadcast multi-party events regardless of location or device.
In addition, BlueJeans’ partnership with Samsung Electronics enables them to enhance the capabilities of the newly-launched Samsung Galaxy Note8 and S8/S8+. This integration provides Samsung Galaxy mobile users a BlueJeans meeting experience to--whether they are tethered with Samsung DeX or untethered and handheld.
"Everything we do is aimed at providing a great user experience," said Krish Ramakrishnan, co-founder and Executive Chairman at BlueJeans, in a release. "We took on the hard work and complexity of application and product integration so that we could deliver a beautiful video meeting experience that delights our customers, enhances productivity, and enriches communications. BlueJeans continues to prove that it offers the simplest and most compelling solutions for all the different ways people work, and this is just the beginning."
Visit BlueJeans to learn more about how they are helping enhance enterprise productivity with video calls.
8x8 Teams Up with Atlassian
The world’s first Communications Cloud provider 8x8 has announced that it has teamed-up with Atlassian Corporation Plc, a leading provider of team collaboration and productivity software and solutions. Through the partnership, 8x8 and Atlassian seek to speed up the adoption of their solutions for mid-market and enterprise companies, helping them to modernize business communications and achieve greater productivity, customer experience, and time to revenue.
San Jose, California-based provider 8x8 will integrate will integrate its Virtual Office UCaaS offering with Atlassian HipChat team collaboration tool. This integration provides a host of benefits to customers, including will offer easy access to telephony, video, meetings and messaging from within HipChat rooms. All notes are also synced with Confluence content collaboration software. The partnership of 8x8 and Atlassian also include the integration of 8x8 ContactNow™ with JIRA Service Desk, aimed toward enhancing the customer service and support experience.
“Customer engagement is everyone’s business and this is driving convergence in the fast-growing collaboration and cloud communications markets, enabling mid-market and enterprise companies to deliver an enhanced customer experience. Atlassian is well-recognized as a leader in the team collaboration space, especially in the world of DevOps (development operations),” said Bryan Martin, Chairman and CTO of 8x8. “As a Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide leader for six years running, 8x8 is ready to become the de facto voice for DevOps by teaming with Atlassian.”