Integ offers voice, web and video conferencing for flat monthly fees

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 16:17

IT Industry - Strategy

ICT systems integrator Integ has expanded the range of hosted communications services offered under its iTaaS brand from IP centrex to audio, web and video conferencing with the launch of iTaaS Conference Centre.

The company claims a key differentiator of the service to be that it is the first to be offered for a flat monthly fee that depends only on scale and scope, not on usage. A basic voice-only conferencing package for up to five participants and five web access portals starts at $1400 per month

Integ CEO, Ian Poole said: "The key thing we have done is around simplicity. We believe the offerings out there in the market are not simple. The pricing is not simple. They are not simple to use and there are a lot of overheads associated with using them. We are not charging any usage fee or management fees. You don't have to call a call centre. All conferences are set up by users."

The service is aimed at medium to large organisations and all conferences are initiated via a web portal as and when the user chooses. Web collaboration packages for the sharing of documents and videoconferencing are available as optional extras, but Poole said the company had chosen to offer voice as the basic product, "because we believe that all collaboration starts with voice."

He added: "We are launching it as part of iTaaS but also as a stand alone application. We have an online RoI tool and we are showing excellent RoIs both against alternatives like travel and against other conferencing solutions."

iTaaS Conference Centre Audio can cater for up to 3000 simultaneous users and Conference Centre Web for up to 500 participants via a single web browser. Conference Centre Video can operate with both desktop and high definition video. Existing room-based systems can be integrate using SIP at up to 720p and 30 frames per second, depending on available bandwidth and QoS.

The product is based, like the iTaaS hosted IP telephony offering, on an Alcatel-Lucent platform (Integ was formerly Alcatel's enterprise systems distribution arm and was created through buyout of that business in 2003, funded in part by its management).

iTaaS IP telephony uses the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX IP PBX, OmniVista network management application and unified comms applications.