NEW DELHI, INDIA: BT and Cisco announced the launch of unified communications services (UC) with the launch of a global “cloud” based IPT solution from BT’s Onevoice UCC portfolio. 

Chris Dedicoat, president, Cisco Europe, said: “Cisco and BT are deepening our established collaboration today to introduce a truly transformational unified communications solution delivered through the cloud at a compelling price point. We believe this new hosted offering will help accelerate our combined ability to bring the benefits of unified communications to more customers globally.”

UC and collaboration will disappear by 2013

The companies would launch a scalable, business-grade, global hosted IP telephony service, which allows businesses to dramatically reduce upfront investment costs whilst accelerating the adoption of UC on a global scale.

The hosted IP telephony service is touted to be the world’s first global offering based on Cisco hosted UC services as the platform for collaborative voice communications. 

It allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organisation, using BT and Cisco’s cloud computing-based technologies. Companies that are tightly managing their capital expenditure will be able to take a first step into converged communications by consuming their IP telephony, voicemail, conferencing and unified messaging technologies on a utility-based, per-user pricing model. 

Available now in the UK, the hosted IPT service from BT will also be available to businesses in the United States and EMEA in 2010 followed by Asia Pacific. Businesses will be able to benefit from having all their UC needs hosted over BT’s next generation 21CN global platform and secure data centres. 

Neil Sutton, vice president, global portfolio, BT Global Services, said: “Businesses today typically have multiple, fragmented, disparate IT and telephony infrastructures that restrict effective communication. BT and Cisco’s collaboration on this innovative, cloud-based unified communications system will help businesses reduce capital expenditure in this difficult time, while giving them the ability to introduce productivity enhancing tools.”