Dialcom`s U.S. Unified Communications Gamble

Dialcom will begin selling its Spontania software suite to enterprises in the United States March 17 and expects it can make a dent in the unified communications and collaboration market currently being split by Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft.

Spontania delivers instant messaging, voice, video and data utilities over any device or network to employees at any location, Dialcom President and COO Bob Johnson told eWEEK.

Users can hold VOIP (voice over IP) teleconferences and multi-party IP videoconferences, share files and do "white-boarding," or bounce ideas off one another on a computer screen.

Corporate employees can switch between communications modes from one computer or mobile device screen with a couple mouse clicks, so workers don't get bogged down in jumping from one media application to the next.

Dialcom, whose U.S. headquarters is in Herndon, Va., began its life selling these capabilities in Spain in 2002, amassing more than 100 customers in telecommunications, media, banking, insurance and manufacturing markets.

Johnson said the company has plied its trade by promising customers it would not bring their networks to their knees because it can regulate video transmission automatically and manually using its patent-pending bandwidth management technology.

Moreover, it can work seamlessly with customers' existing infrastructure; companies needn't rip out and replace their legacy investments in video conferencing equipment, instant messaging, e-mail and IPBX.

For example, Johnson said Spontania will work with IBM's Lotus Notes e-mail and Lotus Sametime instant messaging and Web conferencing, or Microsoft's Outlook e-mail application.