Verizon rolls out cloud apps

Verizon Business has unveiled Cisco unified communications and collaboration applications in the cloud, 'as-a-service', reports CBR Online.

The applications reside in the cloud, or network, enabling organisations to activate employee subscriptions to some or all of the available services, as needed, and pay for the services, once commercialised, on a per-user basis.

The company says it will begin two-month-long field trials of the Cisco hosted collaboration solution.

The social platforms market showed strong gains in 2009, according to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, states Market Watch.

Worldwide revenue for the social platforms market was $369.7 million in 2009, representing year-over-year growth of 55.9%. The top three vendors in 2009 (based on worldwide revenue) were IBM, Communispace, and Telligent, which accounted for 29% of the total market.

IDC research shows the social platform market is key to driving the overall collaborative business applications market and will continue to be an important influence on technology purchase decisions and portfolios.

Telephony solutions provider InVox has introduced a hosted business phone system service called PBXPlus, for start-ups and small businesses, says Small Business Trends.

Just like Google Voice for consumers, PBXPlus is a cloud-based application offering voicemail, unlimited inbound calls, transcription and speech recognition for businesses in the US and UK.

Manohar Chapalamadugu, InVox CEO, says: “Voice applications involving speech recognition are traditionally reserved for organisations with large budgets. PBXPlus now offers several value-added voice solutions and out-of-the-box integrations with popular third party services to increase caller satisfaction and employee productivity.”