Lync Migration Featured Article

Neostratus Combines IP-PBX with Hosted Skype for Business

By Casey Houser Contributing Writer

Neostratus offers its business customers various cloud-based services including voice and telephony tools. It also provides individual software packages such as Microsoft (News - Alert) Skype for Business. Now, clients that use Skype can pair their existing installations with a voice package; similarly, new customers can now grab all their voice and unified communications features from one provider.

Most of all, this announcement affects Neostratus’s partners and enterprise customers in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Partners (the resellers who work in those regions) can now extend full communications packages to their existing and future customers. Many partners have already begun installations, and all markets are now able to take advantage of this development.

Customers will now be able to completely replace their legacy telephone networks (PSTN) in favor of an IP-based network that uses the cloud as its destination for all calling features. Neostratus offers its services as a subscription where clients pay only for the service they need. End users need not tie themselves to lengthy contracts or purchase more service than they could hope to use. For small and midsize businesses, this makes a lot of sense, and it stands against any competition that may only offer yearly or longer contracts that keep customers glued to a service they never use, have outgrown or are dissatisfied with.

Larger business can also take advantage of packages that work on a pay-as-you-go structure. Tiers of service tend to work in a cost-effective manner as companies move into higher levels of bandwidth or connections. Therefore, companies that demand little can grab only what they need while companies that demand much can take the lion’s share of the whole.

The delivery of a Neostratus telephony connection means that customers will receive more than just voice. Skype (News - Alert) for Business can take control of voice, video, texting, presence and many other communications features that bring together two or more people. It can also handle conferences with multiple participants who are either inside the office, working from home or completing their duties from other remote locations. Clients have the power to take control of the underlying infrastructure of their new IP-based private branch exchanges with the Neostratus Cloud Services Manager software that comes with all installations. Inside that link to the cloud services, customers can easily add, delete or modify individual connections to the network.

Neostratus says it can complete a connection of these services for new customers in only a few days. The combination of telephony and Skype is available now and could benefit any companies that need to handle anything from basic voice calling to advanced call routing for hundreds of employees working as help desk assistants.

Edited by Alicia Young