Fujitsu offers hosted telephony and collaboration for enterprises

Fujitsu has announced a range of hosted communications services available to enterprise customers on a pay-per-use basis, including IP telephony, unified communications and collaboration tools.

Announced under the umbrella name of Fujitsu Cloud Connect Collaborate, the services take hosted telephony as their starting point, and allow customers to extend out with other cloud-based services as they wish, according to Fujitsu.

"Some companies are not yet ready for full hosted collaboration tools, so we're offering an IP-based hosted platform for voice, which customers can eventually extend to a fully consistent integrated collaboration platform," said Andrew Davidson, head of marketing for Fujitsu's Network Solutions division.

The suite is based on technology from Mitel and Cisco, particularly the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS), which enables Fujitsu to offer a fully hosted voice and collaboration platform from its datacentres, Davidson said.

Cisco HCS includes Cisco's Unified Communications and Presence tools, plus its WebEx meeting and collaboration applications.

Fujitsu's offering is split into three levels, Foundation, Standard and Premium, based on the level of integration customers require.

Foundation is basically a replacement of the customers' legacy PBX with hosted IP telephony, while Standard adds richer capabilities such as a single phone number for fixed and mobile communications.

The Premium is the whole suite, offering a consistent, unified collaboration experience across the whole enterprise.

All three are being licensed on a per-user subscription basis.

Fujitsu can also take over management of a customer's internet connectivity, to offer full end-to-end service with guaranteed quality levels, Davidson said.

Fujitsu Cloud Connect Collaborate will be ready to deploy in January, and the company is now accepting orders from interested customers.

The company is also "eating its own dogfood" by operating the Cloud Connect Collaborate services internally, Davidson said.