UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES Celebrates 3 Years of Partnership with Intermedia Cloud Communications

UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES Celebrates 3 Years of Partnership with Intermedia Cloud Communications

Posted by Adam Uthe on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Enterprise, Unified Communications

UNIVERGE BLUE’s all-in-one platform enables companies to communicate, collaborate and connect from anywhere at anytime

NEC is thrilled to celebrate the third anniversary of the successful launch of UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES and our partnership with Intermedia. Launched on May 20, 2020, UNIVERGE BLUE has been providing simple, scalable, and customizable solutions for customers to easily manage business communications and collaboration among employees during a time of great change to how many businesses operate.

UNIVERGE BLUE BRINGS EMPLOYEES TOGETHER FROM ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT combines your phone system, chat, video, screen sharing, file management and conference calling into a seamless experience that fits with your business size, needs, and work style. UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE provides a leading Contact Center Software as a Service solution (CCaaS) combining the most robust suite of features with carrier-grade reliability and world-class deployment and support services. And UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT BRIDGE enables inbound and outbound calling via desktop and mobile apps, plus includes an integrated suite of collaboration services including team chat, video conferencing, and secure file sync/sharing.

In addition to the core solutions that have formed the foundation of UNIVERGE BLUE’s success, several new products have also been launched in the past 12 months. UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT ROOMS is an exciting new video conference room solution that allows employees to easily reserve a conference room and simultaneously schedule a video conference for both in-office and remote workers. CONNECT ROOMS is fully integrated with UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and comes FREE with any supported CONNECT license. More recently, NEC introduced UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE. ARCHIVE provides an essential service for any business that needs to preserve its communications for compliance with various legal and industry requirements. With ARCHIVE, businesses can easily search their UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT calls, chats and SMS conversations to retrieve critical information the moment its needed.

UNVERIGE BLUE also introduced several exciting new features and functionality to existing products. UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT introduced Company Messaging, which allows businesses to send and receive rich text (SMS) and picture messages (MMS) to and from the main business or toll-free phone number to enhance customer interactions. CONNECT also unveiled the Service Adoption Dashboard, a free feature included in existing CONNECT licenses that allows administrators to see how often team members are actively using Voice, Chat, Meetings, and Desktop and Mobile Apps.

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE also launched several exciting new features to maintain its status as a leading CCaaS solution. ENGAGE Evaluator uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify, review, evaluate, and provide feedback on the conversations with the greatest business impact. ENGAGE Interaction Analytics allows for the ability to transcribe full conversations and voicemails and uses AI to automatically identify important conversations and notify managers/supervisors to help ensure high quality customer service.

NEC EMBRACES THE POWER OF CHOICE WITH CLOUD CASH

NEC firmly believes in the Power of Choice and the impact it can have on our channel partners’ bottom line. NEC channel partners get to choose whether they want to sell on-premise solutions, cloud solutions, or both! They also get to choose their preferred ownership model so they can retain as much – or as little – contact they have with their customers. And now, with the new CLOUD CASH program, partners can also choose how they get paid on each deal. This one-of-a-kind program helps channel partners alleviate any potential gaps in revenue by letting them determine whether they want to get one lump sum upfront or ongoing monthly recurring revenue (MRR) on each deal they sell.

It’s been another successful year for NEC and UNIVERGE BLUE. UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT AND ENGAGE saw tremendous growth with double the number of customers deployed, while also bringing onboard numerous new UNIVERGE BLUE partners. None of this is possible without our outstanding employees and every growing channel partner network. It’s been an incredible journey, but the best is still to come!

Not currently an NEC Channel Partner? Join our Channel Partner program today, and learn all about how the Power of Choice can drive your business forward.

Thinking Faster than the Speed of Threat: NEC Labs and NEC National Security Systems

Posted by Kathleen Kiernan on Posted in Biometrics, Government, Security Tagged , , ,

Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

By: Dr. Kathleen Kiernan, President of NEC National Security Systems, and Dr. Chris White, President of NEC Labs America

This quote goes to the heart of the combined mission and unique collaborations between NEC National Security Systems (NSS) and NEC Laboratories America (NEC Labs). Not only are the powerhouse research and development (R&D) organizations delivering advanced technologies supporting U.S. Government agencies and the Intelligence Community, their industry-leading researchers are also hard at work creating solutions for future threats.

Problems to Solve vs. Products to Sell
“There’s an extraordinary synergy between NSS and NEC Labs that drive us to build bleeding-edge solutions for problems that are unsolved right now,” says Dr. Christopher White, President of NEC Labs.

NEC NSS leverages 124 years of NEC’s rich history of innovation and service to the U.S. Government with scientific curiosity, a robust R&D budget, and flexibility to rapidly prototype custom solutions. U.S. Government agencies trust NSS’s technology to identify both current and emergent threats and recognize suspicious patterns in the noise of the data.

NEC Labs is the U.S.-based center for NEC Corporation’s global network of corporate research laboratories. The diverse research groups collaborate with industry, academia, and governments to provide disruptive solutions to complex problems.

"As an industrial lab, we bring together smart researchers with diverse perspectives and expertise, challenge them with hard, real-world customer problems, and the result is new technologies and innovations that can disrupt the status quo and change the world,” added Dr. White.

Did You Know
NEC Corporation invests an estimated $1.01 billion annually in R&D, holds 47,000 patents, and has more than 110,000 employees in 160+ countries.

Asu
“In the spirit of ‘asu,’ the Japanese word for tomorrow, we’re not simply solving today’s problems and safeguarding public safety in the present,” says Dr. Kathleen Kiernan, President of NSS. “Our teams are creating a safer tomorrow and a series of tomorrows. We’re thinking and innovating faster than the speed of threat.”

Streamlining Safety and Security with Optical Networking and Sensing
One area of particular focus is providing an early warning of potential threats to law enforcement and government agencies. Utilizing capabilities that see and hear a threat—including natural disasters and patterns of criminal activity—and deploying resources and capabilities immediately can save lives, and protect critical infrastructure.

NEC’s Optical Fiber Sensing technologies identify people, objects, and events in a wide range of environments. NEC combines world-class expertise in transoceanic fiber-optic transmission and machine learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) with advanced distributed fiber-optic sensing technologies to create a solution that provides unobtrusive, low-maintenance detection capabilities.

In addition, NEC Labs is leading world-class research into the next generation of optical networks and sensing systems that will power ICT-based solutions for years to come. From forward-looking theoretical studies and cutting-edge experiments to world- and industry-first technology field trials, NEC Labs delivers globally recognized innovation that looks into the future and translates it into present reality.

Real-world Solutions
One might think, “All this sounds great, but how does it help keep my community safe?” Great question. One real-world example of the efficiencies of optical networking and sensing is roadway monitoring. By placing a fiber sensing box connected to underground fiber running the length of the road, you can monitor a 100-kilometer roadway! With that single system, the location of each vehicle can be detected, along with their speed, weight, how much noise they’re making and more—all to assist in identifying accidents and anticipating threats to public safety – and in real-time.

fiber-optic sensing

Compare optical networking and sensing with traditional traffic cameras. Approximately 1,000 cameras would be required to monitor that same 100-kilometer roadway. Those cameras need power, wired or wireless network link, plus synchronization of images being captured.

NEC’s advanced optical networking and sensing yields not only greater monitoring capabilities to enable faster response times, but the technology also offers substantial cost management and operational efficiency.

“The powerful collaboration between NSS and NEC Labs is taking public safety and security to a new level of innovation,” adds Dr. Kiernan. “We embrace new ideas and input from myriad businesses and viewpoints, driving us to discover dual-use capabilities and new use cases. There’s no question our commitment to ethical and moral values and our dedication to excellence has earned the trust of the Intelligence Community and government agencies. We are always mission focused and driven to provide solutions to those on the front lines, virtual and physical of emergent threat.”

To learn more about NEC National Security Systems’ advanced security solutions, please visit necnss.com.

For more information about NEC Laboratories America, please visit NEC-Labs.com.

Ensure Data Security and Compliance with UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE

Ensure Data Security and Compliance with UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE

Posted by Adam Uthe on Posted in Cloud, Security, Unified Communications Tagged , , ,

FIND THE INFORMATION YOU NEED, THE MOMENT YOU NEED IT

Do you and your organization spend too much time searching for information from your day-to-day business communications? Whether the information is needed to improve productivity, maintain compliance, or assist HR and/or Legal investigations, it’s critical that organizations can find what they’re looking for as soon as possible – and without compromising on information security. That’s why NEC is excited to introduce UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE, a data retention solution available to UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT customers that makes it fast and easy to find important communications the moment they’re needed. It automatically preserves, protects, and provides search and retrieval of critical business communications, including chat, short message service (SMS), phone calls, voicemails, and more.

UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE

Evaluate Employee Productivity Levels
UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE addresses important productivity challenges for almost any business. Sales teams, customer support and most other business functions generate communications that are essential to retracing important decisions or ensuring you have a more complete view of customer interactions. This helps improve the performance of internal customer-facing teams, while also providing a better overall customer experience. ARCHIVE also secures access to internal communications and protects from accidental or malicious deletion that may occur during transitions, leaves of absence, and other significant organizational changes.

Total Compliance For Any Industry
Every organization has a minimal level of compliance it needs to maintain, whether its industry-specific or general protection and privacy requirements. ARCHIVE makes it easy to preserve, identify and retrieve relevant interactions to support compliance with regulatory and internal governance retention requirements. ARCHIVE supports healthcare (HIPAA, CMS), financial services (BSA, SEC, FINRA, MiFID II) and legal industry retention periods and policies, data residency (US, Canada, UK), privacy (GDPR), data integrity, and security requirements.

Protect Your Organization – And Your Employees
Legal teams can also save time by utilizing ARCHIVE to streamline their review processes when conducting investigations or preparing for future litigation. ARCHIVE makes it faster and easier than ever for Human Resource teams to investigate and resolve potential workplace harassment and misconduct that takes place on the organization’s communications and collaboration platform(s).

Designed to support a wide range of organizations, UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE provides a simple, cost-effective, powerful service for preserving and quickly locating relevant communications. Never have to worry about losing important communications again with UNIVERGE BLUE ARCHIVE. To learn more, visit https://www.univergeblue.com/cloud-services/archive/.

Do What’s Best For YOUR Business – Not Someone Else’s

Do What’s Best For YOUR Business – Not Someone Else’s

Posted by Adam Uthe on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Unified Communications Tagged

For the second time in less than 10 years, Avaya has filed for bankruptcy. Regardless of how it came to be, this announcement raises serious questions about what the future holds for their customers, channel partners, technology vendors, and other key stakeholders. Now is the critical time to consider what’s best for your business moving forward.

Fortunately, NEC has over 120 years of experience navigating technological innovations and delivering exceptional communications experiences. Our capability to leverage decades of research has enabled us to remain an ICT leader and bring immense value to both our channel partners and customers.

As an NEC Channel Partner, YOU Get to Decide

At NEC, we recognize that we can’t be successful if our partners aren’t successful – and that means having a positive impact on your bottom line. NEC offers three different channel partner models with various levels of customer ownership and revenue sharing so that you can decide what makes the most sense for your business. You also get to decide whether you want to focus on selling on-premises, cloud, or hybrid solutions, as well as whether you want to get paid upfront or in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). The Power of Choice lets you control your pricing and keep your own branding while maintaining the relationship with your customers. Whatever approach works best for your business, you decide, we support.

NEC Customers Also Benefit from the Power of Choice

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to influence how we work and connect for years to come. Some businesses will return to the office in full force, while others will stay remote or adopt some form of hybrid work. There is no one-size-fits-all solution and that’s exactly why NEC offers a flexible, future-proof business communications experience. Whether you need on-premises phone systems, cloud communications for employee collaboration, a contact center software solution to keep your customers happy (or all of the above!), NEC offers a variety of solutions so you can create the best possible implementation for your business.

Bottom line: Don’t Let Avaya Control What Happens to the Future of Your Business

You can’t control what Avaya does moving forward. But you can continue to evaluate whether you’re making the best possible decisions for your business. NEC knows what it takes to change and evolve with the technological curve while maintaining a healthy, sustainable business model – for our business as well as our channel partners and customers.

If you’re interested in learning more about how NEC can help your business, visit https://www.necam.com/ContactUs/ for more information.

Contact Us Today

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Investing in Aviation’s Identity-First Future

Investing in Aviation’s Identity-First Future

Posted by Jason Van Sice on Posted in Biometrics, Customer Experience, Government, Retail, Security Tagged , , , , ,

In today’s digital age, identity has become an integral part of our daily lives. From banking to healthcare, we rely on secure and trusted digital identities to access services and conduct transactions. The aviation industry is no exception, and as flight volumes return to pre-pandemic levels, airports and airlines are being put to the test in ensuring passenger identities remain trusted and secure throughout the journey.

In our latest e-book, “Investing in Aviation’s Identity-first Future,” we explore the complex and rapidly evolving ecosystem of identity in the aviation industry, as envisioned in the Biometric Digital Identity Prism. We examine how NEC technology like artificial intelligence and analytics are being leveraged to improve passenger experiences and operational efficiencies. Join us as we delve into the importance of investing in aviation’s identity-first future, and why NEC is considered one of the best suited to support the complexity of the passenger identity lifecycle.

Contact us today to get started on your digital transformation journey or meet us in booth 2140 at this year’s Passenger Terminal Expo (PTE) March 14-16, 2023! NEC experts will be on hand to give you an exclusive demonstration of our cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and biometric technology including face recognition, digital identity verification and authentication, biometric boarding, object detection, perimeter detection and advanced analytics. Plus, don’t miss your chance to win Tumi luggage by taking a short survey! See you there.

To read the full paper, download it here.

Contact Us Today

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Fill out the form, and we will get back with you.