No Worries Large Enterprises, ConnectSolutions is Helping You Move to the Cloud

While several companies out there are directing their attention toward bringing cloud services to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), ConnectSolutions is taking a different approach and is targeting large enterprises and federal government agencies, particularly since cloud adoption is struggling in this group, according to company officials.

“For large enterprises, they have rejected the cloud; there is an outright rejection of the public cloud because it doesn’t meet the requirements they need,” Matt Hendrickson, vice president of marketing for ConnectSolutions, told TMCnet today at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2012. “Most of our customers, which are really large enterprises, have rejected the cloud for reasons, like security, control, and customization. The public cloud is not really a viable option.”

Accordingly, ConnectSolutions markets Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solutions for large enterprise and government organizations. Its managed private cloud offering, which sits between the public cloud and on-premises solution, affords large enterprises with all the benefits of the public cloud in a more feasible model for this segment.

“In a way, we are the best of both worlds,” Hendrickson said. “You have all the security and customization that are required along with all of the benefits of rapid deployment and easy pricing.”

Founded in 2007 by veterans from Adobe (News - Alert), ConnectSolutions deploys best-of-breed communication, conferencing, and collaboration applications on a secure, reliable, and scalable platform. By partnering with leading technology providers such as Adobe, Microsoft (News - Alert), and Cisco, the company architects a comprehensive UC solution that is tailored to each organization’s needs.

The company’s two “pillars of value” that it provides include the UC3 Platform, which eliminates the complexity and risk of building and managing a UC stack internally while achieving rapid deployment, lowering overall costs, and improving quality of service, and Orion Services, which enables the company to become an expert extension of an organization’s resources.

Its two pillars and attention to detail have resulted in the company attracting some of the largest communications companies and federal organizations in the world such as the FDA, the DOD, Google (News - Alert), GM, and Kaplan, among other big names.

“Our customers all have very large, very complex global deployments for conferencing communications,” Hendrickson said. “When you get into that level of global plus very complex communications, that’s where our expertise really comes through.”

The UC3 platform handles all the communication, collaboration and conferencing for a business including application management, security and compliance, reporting and analysis, and monitoring and performance.

“The interesting thing about these complex networks is it requires that we monitor and measure the performance of them in real time and provide reports to our customers to see where the trouble spots are,” Hendrickson said.

The Orion Services team is responsible for originating a UC strategy for clients and engineering the customization, integration and support needed for enterprise-wide adoption.

When asked what’s unique about ConnectSolutions, Hendrickson said it’s the fact that the company is technology neutral and that is something it really prides itself on.

“It goes hand-in-hand with our best-of-breed story; we are focused on best-of-breed as we understand there are better solutions for certain jobs,” Hendrickson said. “We take best of breed applications and integrate them together and run them in our environment.”

In addition to exhibiting at ITEXPO, ConnectSolutions will be showcasing its Managed Private Cloud for Microsoft Lync, its latest release. Lync, a premier UC software, increases employee productivity and reduces communication costs and when deployed and managed by ConnectSolutions, organizations have a faster, easier way to get started, while easing the burden on their IT staff, according to officials.

In addition, Michael Fitzpatrick, president and CEO of ConnectSolutions, will join several other industry experts as a panel speaker for the “Storage: Hosted vs. Cloud vs. On-Premise” session taking place Thursday, Feb. 2 from 1 to 1:45 p.m.

To find out more about ConnectSolutions, visit the company at ITEXPO East 2012. To be held Jan. 31- Feb. 3 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, Fla.  ITEXPO is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit ConnectSolutions in booth 530. For more information on ITEXPO registration click here.