Enterprises using Google Apps are about to get a boost “ unified communications is en route to their desktop.
Google is a company that has been making noises about unified communications in one form or another for a while; you can call from your main page using Google Apps, IM and of course email.
Enterprise-sized customers will now be able to get full-blown unified communications on their desktop as reseller Ancoris has set up a UK deal with cloud-based Unified Communications vendor Esnatech.
Davide Petramala, Executive Vice President Business Development and Sales for Esnatech, says this plays directly to why people got into Google Apps in the first place. People went to apps because of the collaboration and workspace features, he says. We can now add unified messaging to their existing infrastructure.
This is particularly important, he suggests, from the point of view of protecting existing investment. Typically an enterprise customer will have an existing VMware implementation, its own network and PBX and may not want to rip everything out and start again in search of some Unified Communications nirvana. The new system sits on top of an existing telephony installation.
Petramala confirmed that this new offering is very much aimed at the larger enterprise; it depends on a number of elements already being in place which are unlikely to be present in the average smaller business.
Among the features are follow-me and find-me functions, and the system will user Google Calendar to determine where to route a call depending on what the days entry says someone is doing and where they are. It works in conjunction with Esnatechs Office-LinX Unified Communications platform.
