Azurn signs major European retailer for its collaboration products

Stuart Corner
Monday, 07 September 2009 08:56

IT Industry - Strategy

Azurn International (ASX: AZU) - a recently-listed Melbourne headquartered global company with a unique approach to unified communications and online publishing - has reached an agreement with one of the largest online retail groups in Europe, Freemans Grattan Holdings, to provide its Merlin and K2K collaboration products.

According to Azurn, Merlin is a patented hardware and software multimedia convergence platform that delivers audio, video and Web collaboration capabilities. K2K is a patent pending application on Merlin that provides 'one click' connectivity from web to telephone.

Azurn describes Merlin as a device that "allows users to converge their wireless, PSTN and broadband carrier networks without the need and cost of deploying additional equipment." It contrasts this to the traditional approach to unified comms, which requires significant investment to deliver the functionality within an enterprise over its IP based network, but does not extend this functionality to external parties using other types of networks.

Freemans Grattan - a part of the larger Otto Group of Germany, the largest online retailing group in Europe - has contracted for an initial one million minute usage to be paid per minute, consumed across the group, and has commited to continue exploration of wider Azurn technology deployment opportunities across other Otto online and contact centre environments.

Ananda Rao, CEO of Azurn, said: "This is an important win for Azurn International and provides us with the necessary evidence to demonstrate that our vision to leverage strategic reseller relationships for sales and business development has started to yield quick results."

Rao told iTWire last month that Azurn's unique value proposition is that its technology "seamlessly integrates audio, video and data content to be delivered, across any carrier network, including the Internet, broadband, telephone and wireless protocols, and to any device such as computers, mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)."