PanTerra Networks Adds ConnectMe HD Video Conferencing Service to Its WorldSmart Unified Cloud IT Services Portfolio

PanTerra’s WorldSmart UCaaS portfolio, which supports a broad base of UCC functionality including VoIP, UM, IM/P, contact centers, fax, mobility and storage adds ConnectMe HD video conferencing based on HTML5 and Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) eliminating the need to download any video client software. ConnectMe is 100% browser-based and will work on all devices and OSs.

Key Feature/Functionality

• Provides common interface for connecting to WorldSmart and Non-WorldSmart users
  
  
• Supports simply click on URL to initiate connection. No more numbers to remember or enter or contacts to look up. ConnectMe URL can be sent via email, placed on webpages or sent via Twitter/Facebook
  
  
• Users have access to multiple media channels. And once the connection is established, either the meeting initiator or the invitees can change or add to that interaction as well
  
  
  • Web Meeting /Desktop Share Audio Call/Audio Conference
  • Video Call/Video Conference
  • Instant Message/Group IM
    
    
• Multiple desktops can be shared simultaneously
  
  
• Supports multiple video sources from a single user. For example, a presenter can have a camera aimed at her while another one is simultaneously showing a prototype product

The one caution here is that the user’s browser needs to support the full complement of HTML5 API’s. Today, Google Chrome is the only browser with this capability. Others are coming along as well, such as Safari, Opera, Firefox and IE.

The WorldSmart Foundation

WorldSmart is delivered 100% from the cloud through an optimized SmartBand IP connection and uses a standard browser and SIP compatible phones. SmartBand is a fully managed and guaranteed quality of service (QoS) bandwidth circuit based upon nationwide MPLS network coverage with extensive local reach of over 234 metro markets. SmartBand supports a number of connection technologies and speed offerings including DSL, T1 and Ethernet over Copper all with traffic prioritization from the cloud ensuring QoS and reliability.

WorldSmart provides web APIs for business process integration with other business applications like Outlook and salesforce automation, making it a sound foundation for enhancing business agility and productivity.

What This Means to You

To Customers: Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are faced with the challenge of offering high-quality customer services, creating new business opportunities, and increasing business agility throughout their supply chain while maintaining, if not cutting, costs. Moreover, companies know that these business challenges must be surmounted in our “winner takes all” competitive environment. With communications infrastructure at the heart of a modern business, UC as a Service (UCaaS) offers a pathway for SMBs to surmount the challenges that face them. With UCaaS they can:

• Focus on strategic business initiatives
  
  
• Allow users to experience more value from the services as they become more efficient
  
  
• Use flexible communication services for interaction between business units, customers and partners
  
  
• Experience immediate and measurable savings on capital expenditures, operational and personnel costs, and
  
  
• Garner future savings on upgrading and new feature additions.

For SMBs the issue is not so much the choice of UCaaS versus on-prem solutions as it is the choice of vendor. PanTerra Networks core value proposition to SMBs, specifically multi-location companies with 25 to 5,000 employees, is its offering of a fully managed suite of cloud-based UCC, storage and mobility services under a common SLA bundled with premises equipment and MPLS networking. Gartner placed PanTerra in the Visionaries quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, North America (Dec. 7, 2011). From Gartner’s perspective, “In 2011, the North American UCaaS market continues to be devoid of participants in the Leaders quadrant. There are no participants currently offering an integrated VoIP, presence, messaging and conferencing capability that can scale to large enterprises.”

We believe that PanTerra offers a competitive SMB UCaaS solution. However, we believe that there is no one size that fits all. Customers need to do their due diligence when shopping here in terms of benefits and TCO. These benefit/cost assessments of alternative solutions need to consider the solution’s impact on productivity improvement, CapEx and OpEx, business continuity, data security, risk of lock-in, etc.

To Partners: PanTerra sells through multiple channels including wholesalers who white label the service, resellers and master/sub-agents. In fact PanTerra just announced a master agent agreement with Converged Network Services Group (CNSG) for the redistribution of WorldSmart and SentraCloud unified cloud IT services. This partnership puts both organizations in a better position to extend PanTerra's services to more customers while exposing a large network of partners to a next-generation unified cloud IT services solution. The addition of ConnectMe to the WorldSmart Unified Cloud IT Services portfolio is certainly an added competitive differentiator in this growing and hotly contested market.