BroadSoft expands customer base for hosted communications

With nine new customers and the launch of a new multimedia conferencing feature, Maryland-based BroadSoft made its case last week that hosted communications and the competitive service providers adopting it are alive and well.

BroadSoft announced ACC Telecom (Columbia, Md.), CyberSouth Networks (Vidalia, Ga.), Fox Communications (Kirkland, Wash.), MetTel (New York), Reynwood Communications (New York and Shrewsbury, N.J.), Tiogan Networks (Moraga, Calif.), Virtual IP and Who’s Calling (Kirkland, Wash.) as its most recent customer wins.

BroadSoft launched the first of what it hopes will be a series of customer conferences for hosted voice providers last week where it introduced the BroadWorks Conferencing Server. The new multimedia server provides a common platform for hosted PBX, voice VPN, unified messaging and conferencing. It is fully integrated with BroadWorks’ back office capabilities and uses the company’s CommPilot Web interface for scheduling and setting up conferences for as many as 96 users.

The conferencing server is intended to move conferencing into the mainstream. "Conferencing is typically viewed as high end, and used on a small scale. In order to make it mainstream, you have to make it integrated. It has to be as easy to use as your own Web page," said Scott Wharton, vice president of marketing for BroadSoft.

BroadSoft has integrated the conferencing server into its hosted communications platform in order to make multimedia conferencing as easy as regular voice services.

"The challenge for the industry and for us is, if you want to accelerate deployment of [hosted communications] and get people beyond just doing [PBX] replacements…you need to offer something better than they got in the TDM world and that resides around multimedia," Wharton said.

In addition to the customers listed above, BroadSoft also signed Onvoy, an integrated broadband provider from Minnesota. Using its private IP network, Onvoy offers local, long-distance voice, video conferencing, Internet access and private data networks.

"There are still a lot of [providers] from different walks of life that see value in the hosted voice space," Wharton said. Among BroadSoft’s customers are independent operating companies, international long-distance carriers entering the local market, ISPs and CLECs.

The customer conference BroadSoft held in Phoenix last week brought these customers together to discuss among other issues the company’s roadmap for the future of hosted communications.

"Based on results and feedback and the amount of service provider participation, it made a [strong] statement about this market being real and happening," Wharton said.