(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Hosted Exchange provider Intermedia (www.intermedia.net) announced on Wednesday it has launched hosted Unison, the first, hosted unified communications service designed for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Hosted Unison combines telephony, email, instant messaging and more into a single service delivered over the Internet.
Based on Unison 3.0 from unified communications software firm Unison, Intermedia’s service is designed specifically to support multi-tenant hosting and the high reliability that comes with that approach.
The service integrates email, telephony, chat, presence, contacts, calendar and more into a single service, as well as supports mobile synchronization of email, contacts and calendar.
Intermedia manages all aspects of hosted Unison service delivery, including the provision of phone numbers and voice service.
The service is backed by Intermedia’s 24-hour support, migration tools, and a multi-million dollar infrastructure that includes four data centers.
Unison users interact with Unison Desktop, which features a similar look and feel to Microsoft Outlook 2007, and comes in both Linux and Windows versions.
“Complex implementations and high costs have shut small- and medium-sized businesses out of unified communications,” says Serguei Sofinski, CEO of Intermedia. “Yet they need these benefits to level the playing field with big business and preserve funds for growth. Hosted Unison makes unified communications’ benefits accessible. It’s the next step in our continued mission to provide SMBs with powerful communications services that are incredibly reliable and simple to manage.”
Unison CMO Rurik Bradbury joined representatives of Google, Apptix, Microsoft, and Open Xchange in a business track session Wednesday at Parallels Summit 2010, where they discussed how unified communications can generate new revenue streams.
