At the annual IBM Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Florida, NEC Corporation of America (NEC), announced UNIVERGE® Sphericall® for IBM Lotus Foundations. This is a UC solution that is fully integrated with IBM Lotus Foundations; an appliance that extends IBM Lotus Sametime UC and collaboration (UC2) tools with the ability to connect to telephony functions.
This is a pretty slick SMB offering in that it is a pure software solution that is tightly integrated with the Lotus Foundations appliance, making use of the autonomic technology in Lotus Foundations, so that SMBs can install and configure their entire UC environment, easily along with their networking and IT applications, using the same tools at the same time. A fully contained offering, Sphericall provides full distributed processing for up to 30K lines, with complete IP-PBX and UC functionality using a single point of administration and a single database across all systems. The system is self healing and configuring, making it easy to set up and administer.
Since the solution is completely embedded within IBM Lotus Foundations it can be delivered by either an IBM reseller or NEC associate, and the two companies have put in place a complete, joint, go to market strategy to support delivery of the offering. Both are being cross trained on the products and can sell the solution on their own.
I like the ease of delivery of this announcement. Auto configuration and management, completely software based and truly integrated into the IBM platform, make this a pretty compelling buy. Plus either side can sell it easily as a result. I believe NEC and IBM will make quite a dent in the SMB market with this product.
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