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ALE, a company acronym that doesn’t represent a microbrewery but operates under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand, on Nov. 30 launched a new virtualized communications management platform that connects business users, business contacts and systems.
ALE Rainbow provides a set of cloud-based communication services (web, PBX, chat and others) with high-end features and collaborative capabilities that are designed to be easy to adopt and deploy by internal users and business partners, regardless of their existing communications systems, the company said.
The first release, Rainbow Essential, is now available as a freemium UCaaS offer (free Unified Communications as a Service offer). Capabilities included are contact management, presence, instant messaging, audio/video calling, screen sharing and file sharing.
It operates via an app on desktops and iOS and Android smartphones and is available free of charge by registering here.
Starting in Q2 2017, Rainbow Essential will include an option to be deployed as a hybrid, coupling with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and other third-party communication platforms for on premises-based systems. The integration between Rainbow and other communications systems brings additional capabilities, such as telephony presence, telephony multi-site federation and call control, the company said.
Rainbow will provide a premium version sometime in 2017, ACE said. This edition, which will become available through the ALE Business Partner network, will provide multi-party conferencing, additional services to administrators (such as user management, back-up, directory integration) and additional PBX integration services (such as advanced call control).
ALE is in the process of creating open APIs so developers can create custom applications and capabilities for the new platform. For example, mobile banking apps can be enriched with chat capabilities from Rainbow. In the public sector or local government, agencies can get connected instantly with citizens, and air travel platforms can use Rainbow to keep passengers informed.
For more information, go here.