Masergy, Cisco construct UCaaS collaboration solution

Aiming to enhance enterprises’ collaboration capabilities, by enabling those wanting to add to hosted voice services with unified communications and collaboration (UUC), enterprise software-defined network and cloud platform provider Masergy has enhanced its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution by adding collaboration with Cisco Webex.

Offering a rationale for the move, Masergy said that business continuity remains a top priority for 2021, and cloud collaboration applications are critical for enabling the remote workforce.

Productivity correlates with a proactive approach to ensure the network can support jitter- and latency-sensitive applications. UCaaS solutions integrated with network services to improve the user experience by delivering uninterrupted voice and video conferencing.

It quoted a Nemertes Research study which shows that IT leaders are increasing spending in response to Covid-19, with 82% planning to direct that spending toward video collaboration solutions and 74.8% directing it to connectivity, including wide area network services.

The joint Masergy-Cisco solution consolidates the former’s hosted UC calling platform and the latter’s Webex application – which underwent a major overhaul at the end of 2020 – into a single application experience, and allows clients to add managed SD-WAN secure connectivity services. Masergy said the fundamental result of the combination is that users can now receive everything they need in one complete and secure solution.

“Companies of all sizes are looking for a no-hassle migration path to cloud communications,” said Dave Michels, enterprise communications analyst at TalkingPointz. “Masergy enhances the Webex solution with networking and management features that give enterprises the advanced features and support often required.”

“This offer combines multiple services, thus reducing the burden on the customer’s IT to deliver and secure communications,” he said. “It also simplifies installation and troubleshooting time. Masergy is filling a gap in the market with an integrated and wide-reaching solution encompassing collaboration technologies, global network services and security services too.”

The cloud-based Masergy UCaaS with Cisco Webex service offers calling, messaging and meeting capability, and the firm is integrating its globally available voice and video calling with the chat, file sharing, and conferencing capabilities of the Cisco Webex application.

The company says that when clients pair this new offering with Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN Secure connectivity services, they can achieve a highly reliable communications experience all across the globe.

One management portal provides a unified view of analytics for the network, UCaaS, WAN edge devices and application performance.

Masergy also offers public switched telephone network (PSTN) services in 25 countries, as well as contact centre-as a service and managed security services.

“Masergy UCaaS with Cisco Webex is a fully integrated experience providing a redefined one-stop shop for both collaboration and IT needs,” said Masergy chief technology officer Terry Traina. “Masergy directly manages and operates the network and security service so our clients can get back to doing what they do best.” 

“Since 2004, Masergy has offered UCaaS services based on Cisco’s technology, and our clients trust us because of our engineering expertise and custom cloud migration support as they look to gain a more agile, intuitive environment for collaboration,” he comcluded.