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Interactive Intelligence Launches Latest PureCloud Services

Since revelation of its Amazon Web Services (AWS)-enabled multi-tenant enterprise collaboration and communications PureCloud platform in June of 2014, customer experience solutions provider Interactive Intelligence has been right on target with the announcement of new platform functionality.  In January PureCloud Directory was announced, and the rollout continues with the announcement of its latest additions: PureCloud Collaborate? and PureCloud Communicate.

The introduction took place at the start of this week’s Enterprise Connect in Orlando.  Jeff Platón, chief marketing officer for Interactive Intelligence, commented on the new capabilities saying:  “PureCloud is the first and only modern, integrated, enterprise-grade cloud platform for business collaboration and communications services… We designed these cloud services to help businesses solve the problem of having to use multiple point products for their collaboration and communications needs – multiple applications that cost increasingly more to manage, lack security, and result in a poor user experience.” 

Interactive Intelligence cites the following functionality offered by The PureCloud Collaborate and Communicate services:

• Real-time enterprise collaboration tools, such as searchable employee profile information, instant messaging, multi-user chat rooms, multi-party video conferencing, and desktop sharing help increase productivity.
• Integrated content management offers cloud-based storage and easy sharing of documents, images and other content both inside and outside the organization for simple, secure and efficient team-based collaboration.
• Sophisticated IP PBX capabilities, including auto-attendant, call recording, speech recognition and unified messaging meet the needs of the largest organizations.
• Support for multiple voice, video and mobile endpoints extends communications and collaboration to any device, including landlines, for a more productive mobile workforce.
• Remote survivability provides PBX, IVR, and call recording functionality in the event of lost Internet connectivity for business continuity.

One of the reasons for making PureCloud multitenant was that it offered benefits to companies looking to leverage the benefits of moving their collaboration and communications to the cloud regardless of their location or size.  This is reflected for large organizations in the unlimited scalability and the ability to handle bursts of activity by PureCloud Collaborate and Communicate, especially businesses that are highly cyclical. And, PureCloud Collaborate and Communicate are also a nice fit with SMBs who are looking for a cost-effective pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you grow subscription model.

“The majority of businesses today are struggling to manage the proliferation of communications channels and devices that employees and customers now have access to,” Platón said. “Our goal is to address this with a set of cloud services that are easy to deploy and use regardless of the medium or endpoint. In short, we’re on a mission to make work simple.”

In terms of availability, PureCloud Collaborate and Communicate services will be offered by the Interactive Intelligence global channel of 350-plus resellers, and by the company’s direct salesforce.

• PureCloud Collaborate is currently generally available as an unlimited free service to an unlimited number of users.
• PureCloud Communicate is expected to be generally available in Q2.

It was also noted that PureCloud Communicate will include all PureCloud Collaborate functionality, and will also include sophisticated telephony features such as IP PBX, fax, audio conferencing, remote survivability and advanced phone features.  You will have to wait just a little time since pricing has not yet been released.

Much has been made about moving not just some things but “E”verything involving collaboration and communications to the cloud.  Another way of saying this would be to make such environments pure cloud.  Interactive Intelligence as it continues to add functionality to PureCLoud is certainly building a nice case for enterprises of all sizes to make the move. 

Edited by Maurice Nagle