Tag Archives: uc platform

Anglo American School of Moscow Extends Video Conferencing and Unified Communications with NextPlane’s Federation Cloud Service

Adding Cloud-based Federation Connects School’s Microsoft Lync Users to Google Talk and Other UC Platforms for Faculty Meetings, Parent-Teacher Conferences, and More.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (September 6, 2012) — NextPlane, Inc., the market leader in cloud-based federation services for unified communications (UC), today announced that the Anglo American School of Moscow (AAS) is the latest educational institution to subscribe to the NextPlane Federation Cloud service. Using NextPlane, AAS Moscow now can federate its Microsoft Lync to Google other UC platforms to facilitate faculty meetings, parent/teacher conferences, and collaborative study.

AAS Moscow has more than 2,000 students and faculty that currently are using Microsoft Lync 2010 for internal collaborative communications, with plans to upgrade the school’s network to add more bandwidth in the near future and to integrate its Lync clients with its telecom system. Even though AAS has deployed Microsoft Lync for internal school communication AAS early on recognized that in order to be truly effective in communicating with parents, colleagues, and friends around the world it had to federate its Lync platform with Google and other UC systems. That’s why AAS selected NextPlane as its Federation Cloud service provider.

AAS selected the NextPlane Federation Cloud service because it provides hi-fidelity federation between Microsoft Lync and other key UC platforms, such as Google, as well as IBM Sametime, Cisco Jabber XCP, Unified Presence Server (CUPS) and WebEx Messenger (formerly Cisco WebEx Connect), Jive OpenFire, Isode M-Link and eJabberd. When connecting via the NextPlane Federation Cloud service, Lync and Google users can see each other’s presence (including custom and activity-based presence), engage in one-to-one chat, participate in multi-user chat sessions, and make voice and video calls. In fact, the NextPlane Federation Cloud is the only service with presence-aware voice and video communications between Microsoft Lync and Google.

“With transportation in Moscow being a challenge, our current plan is to use NextPlane to support Google video conferencing for parent-teacher meetings, and enable more virtual meetings for our faculty,” said Ilya Pekshev, Head of Systems and Network Operation for AAS of Moscow. “And our faculty and students have a lot of friends overseas, so access to Google with zero cost is a real convenience for the entire school. It’s this kind of technology that keeps AAS Moscow on the leading edge.”

Pekshev also notes that his mission is to not only create a real-time collaborative system, but also to provide a safe working environment for all his users. Part of the reason for choosing NextPlane was that the Federation Cloud service offers integrated security including central federation management and provisioning, support for TLS encryption over XMPP and the ability to control communications through policies.

The NextPlane Federation Cloud service accelerates building federated collaborative communities by eliminating the need to set up and maintain separate federation to multiple parties. NextPlane Federation Cloud service subscribers enjoy unprecedented control over which types of traffic (IM, presence, voice, video, and file transfer) are allowed or denied to any of their federated connections. Finally, using NextPlane’s unique analytics and reporting tools to provide valuable insight into how collaboration is affecting network operations.

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, Unified Presence Server (CUPS) and WebEx Messenger (formerly Cisco 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 building collaborative communities around regardless of underlying UC platforms. NextPlane supports domain sharing, allowing two or more UC platforms to share the same domain name and federate internally and externally.

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

NextPlane Reports Record Adoption of the NextPlane Federation Cloud Service as More Businesses Shift to External Collaboration

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