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InterCall, a conferencing and collaboration services provider, announced the launch of InterCall Hosted Unified Communications for the small to medium-size business market. The solution will be bundled with InterCall’s audio conferencing, and custom options will be available. As a hosted solution, customers have the ability to leverage the benefits of UC with minimal upfront capital expenditures, the company said.
To deliver the offering, InterCall has partnered with CallTower, a provider of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS).
InterCall Hosted Unified Communications includes central hosting and management of Microsoft Exchange, Office Communicator, SharePoint, Active Directory and Cisco UC Manager. “We were wholly impressed by InterCall’s Unified Communications vision,” said Bob Barnes, executive vice president of sales, marketing and business development at CallTower. “Their long history of success, their ability and desire to find the best available partners, and their commitment to bring them to market in an integrated fashion is what makes us strongly believe in the partnership.”
InterCall customers will also have access to technology consultants, due to the recent acquisition of SKT Business Communication Solutions by West (InterCall is part of West). SKT BCS is a professional services, systems integration and information technology firm specializing in the consulting, project management and implementation of UC and IP telephony, legacy telecommunications systems, virtualization, and communications-enabled business processes.
“Many small to midsized businesses are very interested in unified communications from a productivity and cost savings standpoint, but are intimidated by the prospect of hardware expenses, complicated implementations and day-to-day management requirements,” said Bob Wise, executive vice president of Unified Communications Services at InterCall. “This solution provides cost-effective, easy-to-deploy and scalable unified communications services that meet the needs of that market.”
Along with a team of more than 950 meeting consultants, InterCall employs more than 1,600 operators, customer service representatives, call supervisors, and accounting, marketing and IT professionals. The company’s American presence includes 10 call centers and 35 sales offices. CallTower’s UC platform is powered by the company’s proprietary CallTower v
“We’ve built our services out of the desire to meet customer needs, so our move from being the No. 1 conferencing provider to the No. 1 collaboration provider is a natural transition that reflects where the market is going,” said Wise. “This partnership will ensure our continued delivery of best-of-breed services and easy-to-use solutions.”