Verizon announced an expansion of its Unified Communications & Collaboration as a Service (UCCaaS) solution, including the availability of Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms. Verizon UCCaaS is a Cisco Powered solution built on Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) that allows enterprises and government agencies to integrate Unified Communications (UC) capabilities into fixed or mobile environments with predictable per-seat pricing. UCCaaS is built with layered security and natively integrates into Verizon’s Conferencing, global MPLS network (Verizon Private IP) and Verizon IP Trunking services.
The new capabilities include:
- Global expansion of UCCaaS to Europe and Asia Pacific – including in-country support for major commercial hubs such as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Verizon 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. (Editor’s Note: See below for complete list of countries.)
- Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms Cloud – allows attendees to collaborate using voice, video, content share, white boarding. Attendees can join a collaboration room from virtually any video device — laptop, tablet, smartphone, desktop, video room system or Telepresence room system. Commercially availability is expected in July.
- Integrated global contact centers – cloud-based contact center capabilities for improving the customer experience and can be integrated with UCCaaS. Availability is expected to be available in the second half of 2015.
- Mobile integration – allowing customers to leverage Verizon UCCaaS over wireless networks with no VPN connections required. U.S. customers can leverage Verizon’s expansive 4G LTE network, while global customers can use their local mobile broadband network.
- Self-service management portals – allowing customers to quickly and easily implement provisioning changes to their service, including service moves, adds and changes, helping control management costs, increase business agility and improve customer responsiveness.
