UK-based Google Apps reseller Ancoris is teaming up with unified communications (UC) firm Esnatech to bring voice capabilities to its Google Apps customers.
UK-based Google Esnatech's cloud-enabled UC product, Office-LinX, integrates with Google Apps to provide customers with an array of telephony functions, such as native call control in Google Gmail and Google Contacts, and federated phone presence in Google Talk.
Users can also use their Google Calendar to automatically determine where to route calls, depending on what their calendar says they are doing or where they are located.
"Our strength is in integrating multiple PBX platforms into mail environments, and specifically around Google Apps what we've been able to do is bridge the gap between the on-premise infrastructure and cloud," said Mehdi Nezarati, Esnatech's president of EMEA.
He added that the partnership with Ancoris would enable UK enterprises to drive productivity and reduce IT costs as they migrate to the Google Apps platform.
Ancoris managing director David McLeman said that over 5 million businesses have already "gone Google," driven by the need to reduce costs, support mobility and drive collaboration. He said that the integration between voice and email data is an important aspect of this.
"The ability for a mobile worker to have their voicemail appear in their email, not just as a WAP file but also potentially translated, is allowing the mobile workers to be much more closely integrated," he said.
The Ancoris/Esnatech offering for Google Apps will go head-to-head with Microsoft's Office 365, which includes its own integrated voice component, Lync online. Nezarati said that integrating Google Apps with a software and hardware agnostic UC platform like Esnatech Office-LinX provides the flexibility for organisations to adopt a wider variety of applications.
"Microsoft's whole voice story is about a single vendor, meaning if you want to optimise on a Microsoft voice strategy you have to rip out everything you have. Right now, most enterprises are in no ROI to do that, because their voice infrastructure works very well," said Nezarati.
"With the Google play, they can integrate a very rich collaboration story, which includes voice, without ripping out anything, taking advantage of the apps they have already invested in. Many organisations are now largely going best of breed."
Office-LinX is interoperable with all major mobile operating systems, enabling Ancoris customers to drive enterprise mobility strategies and deliver access to communication and collaboration tools from any device.
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