verizon's iobi enterprise lets businesses link voice and messaging services to numerous devices...
TRANSCRIPT
Search InformationWeek
HomeNews & Commentary
AuthorsSlideshows
Advertise With Us
Register
Welcome GuestLogin to your account
About UsContact Us
Digital Subscription
HomeNews & Commentary
AuthorsSlideshows
VideoReports
White PapersEventsInterop
UniversityStrategic CIO
SoftwareSecurityCloudMobile
Big DataInfrastructureGovernmentHealthcare
IT Life
Login to your accountRegister
Login to your accountRegister
About UsContact Us
Digital SubscriptionAdvertise with Us
Search InformationWeek
FacebookTwitter
LinkedInGoogle+
RSS
Follow IW:
VideoReports
White PapersEventsInterop
University
50%50%
0 commentsCommentNow
TweetTweet 0 0
Strategic CIOSoftwareSecurityCloudMobile
Big DataInfrastructureGovernmentHealthcare
IT Life
News
4/19/200502:55 PM
Elena MalykhinaNews
Login
Verizon's Iobi Enterprise Lets Businesses Link Voice And Messaging Services To Numerous Devices
Customers can integrate caller ID, E-mail, voice mail, and instant messaging with office phones, cell phones, computers, and other communications devices.
Linking telephony and data gives users more control over the different communications services they use. Now large businesses can link their voice and messaging services withvarious office devices using iobi Enterprise, a software and service package that Verizon Communications unveiled this week. Iobi integrates caller ID, voice mail, E-mail, and
instant messaging with office phones, cell phones, computers, and other communications devices.
Verizon introduced the iobi application platform last year. The enterprise version enhances communications for businesses that have employees who travel or work remotely, havemultiple locations, and deploy different communications services, says Edward McGuiness, senior VP of marketing at Verizon's Enterprise Solutions Group. The iobi Enterprisecall-management, unified-messaging, personal-information-management, and productivity tools are linked to an existing voice and data network and can be accessed via a PC
client, Web browser, or voice portal.
Having telephony link to data communications lets employees remotely answer calls coming into their offices or forward the calls to another device from any location. They alsocan retrieve voice messages via their PCs.
Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J., has tested iobi Enterprise for three months. With 11,000 students, more than 1,000 employees, and about 3,500 phone lines, theuniversity needs control over multiple communication services and also must preserve its investment in the existing network infrastructure, says Neal Sturm, Farleigh Dickinson's
associate VP and CIO. "What's magic about iobi is that it's an application and service in one neatly bundled package that brings all communication together for us," he says.
Farleigh Dickinson plans to deploy iobi Enterprise at its residence halls, which will make it easier for the university to contact students. The majority of students have migrated tocell phones and "we need to look for ways that will bring students back to telephone lines," Sturm says. Additionally, the service will be used by the university's crisis-managementteam, where calls will automatically be routed to the team instead of manually forwarded as they are today. Iobi will make it easier for administrators who travel between campuses
to have calls automatically forwarded from their office phones to their cell phones or other devices, Sturm says.
Verizon is entering an emerging market to compete with IP-telephony equipment and software vendors such as Avaya and Siemens, voice-messaging vendors such as LotusSoftware and Microsoft, and even the major networking players such as Cisco Systems, says Rob Rich, executive VP at research firm the Yankee Group. What differentiates iobiEnterprise is that it's a managed service as opposed to software and hardware that a customer has to string together, Rich says. "There are pieces of this kind of capability in the
different voice-over-IP offerings from other service providers and software vendors, but I haven't seen anybody that has the breadth and the flexibility of what Verizon is offering,"he says.
Iobi now comes in three flavors: iobi Home for consumers is available in six states, iobi Professional for small and midsize businesses is offered in New York and the Northeast,and the latest iobi Enterprise is available in areas between Virginia and Maine, where Verizon provides Centrex voice services. The service is priced between $7 and $8 a month
per user.
Current Verizon Centrex customers can sign up for iobi Enterprise on a contract basis with Verizon Select Services, Verizon's long-distance affiliate. Centrex customers can reap
0LikeLike ShareShare
Comment | Email This | Print | RSS
Newest First | Oldest First | Threaded View
long-term benefits by signing up. "As they move from a traditional switched Centrex service to an IP Centrex service, iobi will bridge the gap and give them a common interface,"Rich says. "Iobi also has the potential to enhance the service portfolio that Verizon delivers to its customers in the future."
More InsightsWebcasts
How to Build a High Availability & Disaster Recovery EnvironmentNoSQL Database Architecture: Best Practices Revealed
More WebcastsWhite Papers
Single Sign-On: with Passwords, Less is MoreEvery Business Is a Mobile Business
More White PapersReports
2015 App Dev Priorities SurveyPonemon Institute Research: How IT security is addressing threats to structured and unstructured data
More Reports
Comments
Be the first to post a comment regarding this story.
Subscribe to Newsletters
Reports Infographics
Interop Las Vegas Full & Half-DayWorkshops
Interop Las Vegas Conference & Expo
Aligning emerging technology andITSM
More UBM TechLive Events
White Papers
Current Issue
2015 State of End User Computing
Download Now!More Reports
More White Papers
InformationWeek Tech Digest, Nov. 10, 2014Just 30% of respondents to our new survey say their companies are very or extremely effective at identifying critical data and analyzing it to make decisions, down from 42%
in 2013. What gives?
Download This Issue!Subscribe Now!
Back Issues | Must Reads
Single Sign-On: with Passwords, Less isMore
Every Business Is a Mobile Business
Stress-Test Data Virtualization: Better Insights, Lower Costs
Why "Good Enough" Isn't Good Enough Anymore for Software Configuration Management
Case Study: Finding Customer-Critical Bugs with UndoDB for Linux
Video
Live Events Webinars
15
3
10 comments | Read | Post a Comment
Slideshows
All Videos
More Slideshows
Archived InformationWeek RadioThis InformationWeek
Join us for a roundup of the top stories on InformationWeek.com for the week of November 16, 2014.FULL SCHEDULE | ARCHIVED SHOWS
465 comments | Read | Post a Comment
Everything You've Been Told About Mobility Is WrongAttend this video symposium with Sean Wisdom, Global Director of Mobility Solutions, and learn about how you can harness powerful new products to mobilize your
business potential.
Full schedule | Archived Shows
10 Holiday Party Attire Atrocities
H-1B Visa Program: 13 Notable Statistics
7 Important Tech Regulatory Issues In 2015
Twitter Feed
Cartoon: Your SLA Is A Turkey - InformationWeek informationweek.com/it-life/cartoo… via @InformationWeek
TeamLogic IT @SonicSez
A Super-Wrong Way To Understand Net Neutrality - InformationWeek ubm.io/1zA5X7m via @InformationWeek
Robert (Rob) Burns @robertlburns
How Much Should #Healthcare Organizations Spend On #IT? via @InformationWeek #HealthIT How Much Should Healt healthcaremarketingdata.com/how-much-shoul
Justin Hipps, MBA @HealthcareMBA
48m
55m
2h
InformationWeek Radio
Sponsored Live Streaming Video
SnapLogic CEO Talks Changing IT
About UsContact Us
Customer SupportReprints
Editorial Calendar
TwitterFacebookLinkedInGoogle+
RSS
Featured UBM Tech Sites InformationWeek | Network Computing | Dr. Dobbs | Dark ReadingOur Markets: Business Technology | Electronics | Game & App DevelopmentWorking With Us: Advertising Contacts | Event Calendar | Tech Marketing Solutions | Corporate Site | Contact Us /Feedback
Terms of Service | Privacy Statement | Copyright © 2014 UBM Tech, All rights reserved