NEC launches Cisco unified comms offering

NEC is in discussions with five mystery resellers as it looks to deploy its Cisco-based unified communications offering.

The company will be one of six Cisco collaboration partners in Australia, along with Telstra, Annitel and Amcom.

NEC will initially work with telco AAPT to bring the collaboration offering to market.

Steve Blunt, NEC's general manager of communications, said the company was currently working on building "a channel for the future".

"We're in discussions with five key partners in our channel model at the moment," Blunt told CRN, though he would not reveal their identities.

NEC Cloud Collaboration will be offered as a pay-as-you-go service and will deliver telephony, video and instant messaging to personal computers and mobile devices.

According to research firm Telsyte, only 10 percent of Australian businesses are using the cloud for enterprise communications.

The numbers come from Telstye's new report 'The road to cloud unified communication and collaboration'.

NEC hopes to its foothold in the IP phone market will help it break into the market as customers upgrade their existing IP-PABX phone systems.

"We still sell thousands of PABX phones every year. The Victoria government has 50,000 end points for telephony," said Blunt.

The company's unified communications offering is "the final testing phase of the platform" before its November launch. Blunt said the solution could be offered by resellers as early as January of 2014.