Recently, global organizations in diverse industries including manufacturing, automotive, energy, media, legal, education, pharmaceuticals and information technology have discovered the advantages of leveraging unified communication (UC) platforms to build collaborative business communities.
As this trend grows, thousands of users around the world exchange close to a billion chat, presence, voice and video messages with business colleagues in their partner ecosystems each month using NextPlane’s UC Exchange service.
UC Exchange allows companies to move beyond organizational boundaries and connect in real-time to increase efficiency, productivity, and gain competitive advantage.
About UC Exchange
UC Exchange is a UC and social media federation service with a searchable directory of over 100 (and growing) ‘federation-ready’ organizations where companies can enable collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers using a secure management portal.
UC Exchange provides:
- UC-to-UC Federation Services
- UC-to-Skype Federation
- UC-to-Yahoo! Messenger Federation
- UC-to-Facebook Messenger Federation
- UC-to-Social Media Federation
- Secure Management Portal
- Directory Services
- XMPP Hosted Group Chat Federation
- Intra-Domain Federation
- Security and Policy Enforcement
- Reporting and Analytics
| Directory Member | Community Member | |
|---|---|---|
| UC Exchange Management Portal access | Free | Free |
| Internal Domain Provisioning Wizard | Free | Free |
| Entry in & Search in the UC Exchange Members Directory | Free | Free |
| Accept Inbound Federation Requests | Free | Free |
| Federation with users on Gmail.com | Free | Free |
| Access to Basic Usage Reports | Free | Free |
| Make Outbound Federation Requests | Subscription | |
| Skype Federation | Free Trial | Subscription |
| Yahoo! Messenger Federation (coming June 2013) | Free Trial | Subscription |
| Facebook Messenger Federation (coming June 2013) | Free Trial | Subscription |
| Social Media Federation | Free Trial | Subscription |
| XMPP Group Chat Federation | Subscription | |
| Policy Enforcement / Disclaimers | Subscription | |
| Directory Services - Active Directory Sync Tool and Search Bot | Subscription | |
| Advanced Routing - (Intra-Domain, Single Domain, Aliasing) | Subscription | |
| Advanced Federation Analytics | Subscription | |
| 24x7 Support and SLAG guarantee | Subscription |
UC-to-UC Federation Services
UC Exchange Federation Services accelerates the development of collaborative business communities by eliminating the need to set up and maintain separate federation connections with multiple partners. Once an enterprise federates its UC platform with UC Exchange and becomes 'federation ready' it can federate with any other UC Exchange member (subject to the level of subscribed service).
UC Exchange enables end-users within the UC Exchange community to easily share presence, exchange instant messages, participate in multiparty chat sessions, make voice calls, share files, and participate in voice conferences. UC Exchange supports all major UC platforms including Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Google, Open-Fire, Isode, eZuce, and eJabberd.
UC to UC Federation Services provide:
- Presence
- Enhanced Presence Support
- Custom Status
- Is-Typing
- V-Cards
- One-to-one and Multi-User Chat
- Group Chat
- Voice and Video
- Voice Conferencing
UC-to-Skype Federation
The UC Exchange UC-to-Skype Federation Service allows end-users on Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Google, OpenFire, Isode, eZuce, and eJabberd UC platforms to add Skype users to their contact list, share presence, and exchange instant messages. Users on Microsoft OCS and Lync clients can participate in voice calls with Skype users.
UC-to-Yahoo! Messenger Federation
The UC Exchange service for UC to Yahoo! Messenger Federation allows companies to communicate seamlessly with Yahoo! users from their UC clients. Yahoo! Messenger contacts can be easily added to UC client contact lists exactly the same way as other federated contacts.
Users can share presence and exchange instant messages with Yahoo! Messenger contacts or vice versa as if they were on the same UC platform.
UC-to-Facebook Messenger Federation
UC to Facebook Messenger Federation allows companies to communicate seamlessly with their customers on Facebook. Facebook contacts can be easily added to a UC client contact lists exactly the same way as other federated contacts. Users can share presence and exchange instant messages with Facebook contacts or vice versa.
UC-to-Social Media Federation
UC Exchange Social Media Federation enables organizations to connect their UC platforms to social networking services such as Twitter, Yammer and Chatter.
UC Exchange Social Media Federation Apps for Twitter, Yammer and Chatter can be added as separate contacts to a UC client's contact list without installing a plug-in. This means that regardless of their UC platform, users can easily participate in real-time feeds, contribute to group discussions, search, and send private messages directly from their UC clients.
Secure Management Portal
Using a secure management portal, UC Exchange members can easily build a business community of partners by searching a central directory of participating "federation-ready" members. Once a business partner is located, a federation request can be sent to their UC administrator. UC Exchange tracks all federation requests and tasks in a unique workflow process that simplifies federation set up.
Additionally, the management portal provides summary and detailed statistics on federation traffic. This provides valuable insight into user adoption across an organization and their partner community.
Federation Management Portal
Directory Services
In order to build successful collaborative business communities, organizations need to find and connect with "federation-ready" partners. Once federated, employees must be able to engage with the right people, at the right time - seamlessly across multiple organizations. UC Exchange Directory Services is a searchable phone book for "federation-ready" partners, and validated contact information based on employee profiles received from contributing members.
Authorized end-users can search for the contact information of their colleagues in partner organizations directly from their UC clients without installing a plug-in. Users can search for colleagues by a combination of name, company, title, and/or location.
XMPP Group Chat Federation for Microsoft Lync and OCS
UC Exchange XMPP Group Federation enables Lync and OCS end-users to participate in XMPP-hosted group chat rooms directly from their UC clients without a Microsoft Group Chat client and server infrastructure deployment.
The UC Exchange XMPP Group Chat Federation App allows end-users to add XMPP chat rooms as contacts and participate in chat room discussions.
Intra-Domain Federation
UC Exchange allows two or more UC platforms to federate while sharing the same domain name and without the need for costly and disruptive implementation of sub-domains.
Security and Policy Enforcement
The NextPlane UC Exchange policy enforcement features give organizations control over which types of traffic (IM, presence, voice, video, and file transfer) are allowed or denied across any of the federated domains and/or users (internal and/or external) within their domains.
For instance, UC Exchange can enforce a policy that allows only specific users (by SIP or XMPP address) from a federated domain to IM only with select employees within an organization, or block designated employees from communicating with select federated domains while allowing the rest of the organization to communicate and collaborate with them.
Reporting and Analytics
The Management Portal provides reporting and analytics, including charts and usage statistics such as traffic volume, number of messages, and the number of users. Reports can be generated on a domain or organizational level and can also be downloaded for further analysis.
These useful reports allow organizations to gain a valuable insight into user behavior, federation adoption and how users are collaborating with business partners.
Why Join UC Exchange?
- UC Exchange is a cloud-based service which does not require any software or hardware on-premise components.
- UC Exchange makes it easy to find and connect with your ‘federation-ready’ partner organizations regardless of underlying UC platforms.
- UC Exchange bridges the geographic and organizational divide to extend your UC reach and make your end-users more productive.
- UC Exchange ensures your end-users can collaborate with external colleagues as if they are on the same platform.
- UC Exchange streamlines the UC domain provisioning and federation request workflows to multiple partners.
- UC Exchange provides a secure, scalable service with 24x7 service guarantees.