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California Strawberry Commission

Interview with Stan Massat, Information Systems Manager, Calstrawberry

 
About the company: The California Strawberry Commission (CSC) is a state government agency representing more than 500 growers, shippers, and processors of California strawberries.  Self-taxation by CSC members funds the commission’s activities and projects. CSC supports production and nutrition research, grower education and training, food safety program, and marketing and information to consumers in North America and beyond.

 
What was the challenge that you looking to solve?

We were looking for a unified communications solution that would integrate with our existing Microsoft infrastructure. Microsoft Lync, with its advanced conferencing and collaboration features, seemed like a great fit. We were looking for a service provider that could also deliver voice service. After looking at a few companies in the space, we realized that most vendors lacked some key features, such as federation with other platforms, custom domains and a multi-tenant environment.

Why NextUC?

We like that NextUC offers hosted Microsoft Lync with all of the advanced PBX features. Plus it is backed by CallTower with whom we are familiar having met with and evaluated their managed UC solution. NextUC’s free trial seemed like a great idea to test the solution for our 12 users initially, with plans to expand up to 30.

What do you see as the main benefits of NextUC?

We were foremost looking for consistency and ability to control cost. With NextUC we get everything in one bundle for one price: voice, conferencing and collaboration.  Also, the automated on-boarding and your community support portal are great, we got up and running fast and our issues were resolved within hours versus days.

What features do you use the most?

We currently use Lync for presence, chat and telephony. We have plans to use Lync for conferencing going forward and if the trial proves itself, we are looking at replacing our PBX entirely.

Written by Bob Barnes

The growing trend of ‘working-at-home’ creates immense benefits for the employer and the employees. Employers save on real estate cost, infrastructure and telecommunications and on top of that achieve higher employee satisfaction and lower attrition rates. Employees save time and money on commute, work clothes and lunches and ultimately everybody is happier. However, every company needs a solid and flexible communications system to allow virtual workers to work efficiently from home, the road or a coffee shop.

It is no longer enough to have just a laptop and a cell phone, you need the ability to take business phone calls from wherever you are on a single number. You need to be able to get on conference calls right from your laptop or tablet. You also want to see who on your team is available so you can get answers faster and speed up your decision making process. Microsoft Lync provides an interface that delivers all of these benefits – Presence, chat, telephony, conferencing and collaboration tools accessible from anywhere.

If you are a small business and don’t want to purchase and manage the server yourself, the best option is to sign up with a hosted provider and have Lync delivered from the Cloud. That way, you can focus on projects, not on maintaining the technology. NextUC delivers hosted Lync and  will allow you to not only leverage the rich communications features but also make phone calls directly from the Lync client.  It is powered by CallTower, Microsoft Gold Certified client with over a decade of experience managing hosted Microsoft communications.  See how it works here. Right now we are running a limited time free Beta trial so you can check out the benefits of Lync for yourself. It is free so you have nothing to lose.

Written by Bob Barnes

Today,  NextUC announced compatibility of its hosted Lync platform with Polycom and Snom Voice over IP desktop phones.  The phones are designed especially for use with Microsoft Lync and deliver rich functionality beyond the basic voice features of traditional IP phones. They include support for productivity features included in Microsoft Lync, such as Presence, quick dialing from Lync contact list and search.

NextUC has once again made the delivery and consumption of enterprise class products and features easy, fast and efficient for smaller businesses.  Clients can be up and running with a telephone system, telephone numbers, in and outbound calling, audio conferencing, web conferencing, chat, video and more in less than 10 minutes.  The addition of Ethernet phones allows businesses to extend service into conference rooms, kitchens or open sitting areas where PCs are not available.

Some of the Lync features on the IP phones include Display buddy list and Presence on the color display for one touch dialing, advanced directory lookup via phone keypad, transfer and hold key for fast call execution or a color display to customize video.  NextUC is now fully compatible with Polycom CX5000, CX3000, CX700 among others and will be adding other providers.

NextUC is currently offering a limited time Free Trial and clients can sign up in the self-provisioning portal within a few minutes.  “We continue to see nearly 100% growth in NextUC adoption month over month based on the satisfaction of our clients.  NextUC is a truly revolutionary product that is a perfect fit for small and medium businesses – it delivers all core communication functionality from the cloud, saving SMBs valuable resources and much needed cash.” Said Bob Barnes, EVP of Sales, Marketing and Business Development.

About NextUC

NextUC is a cloud-based communications product providing enterprise-class voice, messaging, conferencing, collaboration and mobility capabilities from a single unified client, hosted Microsoft Lync, all provided by CallTower.  For a monthly subscription fee, NextUC replaces all of your voice and conferencing providers and streamlines your multiple communications channels into one collaboration platform that improves your team’s efficiency and productivity. NextUC  works on all operating systems including Windows, iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. For more information please visit www.nextuc.com.

Written by Bob Barnes

NextUC is finishing off the final pieces in the next phase of rollout…  integration with Office365.  While users have always been able to use the Exchange inbox for Unified Messaging with NextUC, now users will be able to leverage Exchange Plan 2, E3 or E4 plans and get the end to end Microsoft Unified Messaging experience.

This additional service will be like the rest of the NextUC platform in that it will be easy and fast to deploy and will have a great user experience.  This is just another example of the rapid evolution in the product and helps explain the impressive satisfaction rates for users on the platform.  The development folks are hard at work extending the offering in ways that will continue to impress the market.

Jump on board and give the product a try, what is there to lose?  Maybe wasted cycles, wasted time, wasted money!

Written by Bob Barnes

If you are like 99% of the companies out there, you probably have at least some mobile workers. How do you ensure that they have the right tools to connect from the road or their home office? They need to have an efficient way to hop on a conference call or online meeting with screen sharing from wherever they are.

The nice thing is that you can do that with Microsoft Lync. With Lync you can collaborate from anywhere just like you are in the office conference room. Through Lync, you can quickly see who is at their desk, online, away or offline and connect via instant message, audio or video conference. You can share desktops and programs and go over a project or a proposal in no time.

Whether team members are in the next room or on the road, the powerful combination of presence awareness and IM can help improve productivity, drive business efficiencies and build a more agile organization.

On top of the powerful conferencing tools, your mobile workers can also click-to-call users on other PCs and Macs or traditional phones directly from the Lync client. This is possible because NextUC provides a fully voice-enabled Lync, so you can essentially replace your entire PBX and phone system. NextUC also integrates with Office365 so that you can make phone calls easily from your chat window.

How will your organization benefit from all of this? You will:

• Save cost by replacing your private branch exchange (PBX) – you no longer need one, because you are making calls from Lync.
• Achieve direct savings from web and teleconferencing – you get unlimited minutes for outbound and inbound calls.
• Reduce IT and telephony labor cost – you no longer need a staff to manage your phone network.
• Increase user productivity – users now see everybody’s presence and can save time playing phone or email tag.
• Save on hardware, software and licensing - you don’t need to buy any of it. It is all available to you on a subscription basis.
• Save on travel - you can deliver your presentations via online meetings and travel less.

So why wait? Right now you can get a Free trial of hosted Microsoft Lync delivered from the cloud by NextUC. The trial has been extended through February 2012 so don’t hesitate and sign up now!

Written by Bob Barnes

Foster City, CA, November 2, 2011:  Today, NextUC, an on-demand unified communications provider, announced the launch of a Partner Incentive Program for Microsoft Lync 2010. The program offers attractive incentives for resellers and partners who activate new clients for a 90-day free Beta trial.  The prizes include Microsoft Arc Mouse, Microsoft Office Professional and a grand prize drawing for Kinect for Xbox 360 in addition to an appealing recurring revenue commission.

The benefits of the NextUC Partner Program include access to Lync 2010, dedicated channel sales and marketing tools and access to a user-friendly on-boarding portal. The product allows users to self-provision their account on the NextUC website, where clients can register, pick telephone numbers and start using Lync, a unified-communications system in minutes. Customers who sign up can instantly chat and make calls to other computers or traditional phones.

NextUC provides clients the flexibility to make phone calls from a variety of devices, including their PC’s, MACs, iPads, iPhones and Android phones.  Companies and users can choose new or port existing numbers and chat with users on other platforms, such as Windows Live.

NextUC is currently offering a free trial of NextUC Enterprise, a comprehensive bundled service that includes secure chat, presence, unlimited calling to computers and PSTN, audio, video and web conferencing, unified messaging (Voice-to-text) and email integration and NextUC Messenger, a hosted secure chat and presence service. Partners interested in trying the service can sign up for a limited-time free BETA trial.

NextUC offers three tiers of prizes for its partners, ranging from 10, 10-25 and 25+ activations. For every 10 activations, resellers get a Microsoft Arc Mouse, for every 25 activations a copy of Microsoft OfficeProfessional and for 25+ activations the reseller will enter a drawing for a Kinect for Xbox 360. Partners can sign up for the program in the dedicated partner portal and become a reseller of a first-to-market telephony enabled Lync service to their clients.

About NextUC

NextUC is a cloud-based communications product providing enterprise-class voice, messaging, conferencing, collaboration and mobility capabilities from a single unified client, hosted Microsoft Lync, all provided by CallTower.  For a monthly subscription fee, NextUC replaces all of your voice and conferencing providers and streamlines your multiple communications channels into one collaboration platform that improves your team’s efficiency and productivity. NextUC  works on all operating systems including Windows, iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. For more information please visit www.nextuc.com.

Written by Bob Barnes