NextPlane Federation Cloud Accommodates More than 127, 000 Users and 280 million Messages across Multiple UC Platforms over 30-day Period.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (June 27, 2012) — In May, NextPlane, Inc., the market leader in cloud-based federation services for unified communications (UC), posted a record month connecting more businesses than ever into federated business communities through the NextPlane Federation Cloud service. NextPlane federated UC traffic exceeded a quarter of a billion messages during the month, illustrating the growing demand for federation between disparate UC platforms to enable real-time, collaborative business communities using cloud computing.

Forward-looking global organizations in a number of industries, including manufacturing, automotive, oil and gas, media, pharmaceuticals and financial services, are integrating the NextPlane Federation Cloud into their enterprise business strategy. During the month, the NextPlane Federation Cloud service federated a total of:

– 1,090 unique domains, connecting more than
– 127,925 unique users, and more than
– 280 million IM, multi-user chat and presence messages transited the NextPlane service.

This highlights the increase in demand for a solution that brings users locked in siloed unified communications platforms together in a collaborative business community. NextPlane offers the only cloud-based presence, IM, multi-user chat, voice and video federation service. The NextPlane Federation Cloud service provides the ability to federate with the widest reach of business partners – supporting all major UC platforms including Microsoft LCS, OCS, OCS R2 and Lync, Cisco Jabber XCP, CUPS and Webex Connect, IBM Sametime, Google Apps, Jive OpenFire, ISODE M-Link and eJabberd. In addition, NextPlane Federation Cloud members benefit from enhanced services such as guaranteed service levels, policies, and a wide variety of reporting and analytics tools.

“Unified communications speeds time-to-market with real-time collaboration, and our cloud-based solution breaks down the interoperability barriers between UC platforms,” said Farzin Shahidi, Founder and CEO of NextPlane. “More businesses are realizing that building federated partner communities using presence, chat, voice, and video has a competitive advantage and saves them time and money.”

According to a study by Fonality, using unified communications saves workers 75 percent of the time they normally waste trying to track down associates and information, and 50 percent of the time wasted trying to contact customers. The same study indicates that if you calculate the value of unified communications for 50 workers, each earning an average salary of $40,000 per year, the savings in productivity would be $942,000 annually. When you calculate the value of those UC efficiencies by expanding collaboration with federation to business partners, the savings in time and money multiply exponentially.

The NextPlane Federation Cloud service accelerates building federated business communities by eliminating the need to set up and maintain separate federation to multiple partners. In addition, NextPlane Federation Cloud subscribers enjoy unprecedented control over which types of traffic (IM, presence, voice, video, and file transfer) are allowed or denied across any of their federated partners. Finally, using NextPlane’s unique analytics and reporting tools, companies are gaining valuable insight into how collaboration with their federated partner community is driving their business.

To demonstrate the value of the NextPlane Federation Cloud to build collaborative business communities, NextPlane is offering a 30-day trial to qualifying organizations. For more information, visit http://www.nextplane.net.

About NextPlane, Inc.
NextPlane offers the NextPlane Federation Could service for unified communications (UC) platforms, seamlessly federating Microsoft LCS, OCS, OCS R2 and Lync, Cisco Jabber XCP, CUPS and Webex Connect, IBM Sametime, Google Apps, Jive OpenFire, ISODE M-Link and eJabberd. Using the NextPlane Federation Cloud service, organizations can connect users from different companies regardless of underlying UC platforms – with shared presence, instant messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video – as if they are on the same UC platform.

NextPlane offers an ideal solution for companies migrating from one UC platform to another, or to integrate different legacy platforms following a company merger or a new contract or partnership. NextPlane even supports domain sharing, allowing two or more UC platforms to federate internally and externally using the same domain name.

For more information please visit http://www.nextplane.net, or contact sales at sales@nextplane.net.

Contact:
Farzin Shahidi
NextPlane, Inc.
(650) 305-7404
farzin@nextplane.net

Tom Woolf
Woolf Media & Marketing
(415) 259-5638
tomw@woolfmedia.com