VON: New MetaSwitch portal aimed at ease-of-use

SAN JOSE--MetaSwitch today announced a newly redesigned Web portal that will allow its service provider customers to offer their subscribers an easy way to buy and use next-generation voice services.

By leveraging Web 2.0 standards, the new portal lets customers choose new features and manage existing ones, such as find-me, follow-me and unified messaging, with intuitive tools, said Andy Randall, vice president of marketing. It is also the first in a series of initiatives MetaSwitch is making as it implements IP Multimedia Subsystem technology.

“We have had a Web portal, but we decided to do a ground-up redesign, based on the experience we’ve had to date,” Randall said. “We’ve had a lot of experience with what carriers are doing with Web-based services, so we thought we would take our experience and do it again.”

Service providers can brand and customize the portal to fit their needs and those of their customers. A customer dashboard provides an overview of customer services and quick access to things such as call logs for unified messaging, as well as a status list that alerts the user to things such as call-forwarding of all calls.

Another feature is an easy-to-use guide for programming find-me, follow-me rules, Randall said. “We wanted to be sure the service settings and interactions were explained in plain English,” he said.

The CommPortal is integrated in MetaSwitch’s IMS transition, including an interface to the Home Subscriber Server and contact lists that are a shared service.

“This is the first of a number of building blocks that we will be introducing this year, leading up to IMS,” Randall said.