Alteva, a unified communications hosted solution provider recently announced a partnership with Microsoftand Broadsoft to provide a true hosted Unified Communications (UC) solution to small businesses. Alteva has connected their hosted voice and messaging services with Microsoft Communication Services product suite, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications Server (OCS). Alteva is essentially offering a hosted unified communications platform that offers hosted Exchange, hosted Sharepoint, and hosted OCS ("The Big 3" Microsoft communications apps) - all from a single service provider. (not to mention hosted VoIP) Obviously, this greatly reduces the complexity of integrating the various popular Microsoft applications in-house, performing maintenance (TCO), and the upfront capital expenditure for purchasing Microsoft licenses.

Alteva claims to be the first one to to offer all three in a single hosted solution when they stated, "Alteva has been selected as one of the only hosted voice service providers to offer the complete suite of Microsoft Communication Services, with integrated voice services. Combined with Microsoft's features, remote Alteva users can access email and customer information, view and edit documents, manage calendars, and collaborate with coworkers". Alteva's hosted solution helps enable voice-enabled Outlook calendars and email. In fact, they offer HD Voice with voice integration.

"By allowing for more fluid and direct collaboration between employees with one another, suppliers, partners and clients, a unified communications solution helps businesses of any size to streamline communications," said William Bumbernick, CEO, Alteva. "It also helps reduce costs and minimize delays to assure faster interaction with anyone important to the organization, even if they are not physically at the same location. By working together with an innovative company like Microsoft, we are now able to provide a proven and reliable, fully integrated communications solution."

"Other companies claim to offer UC, but in actuality they are only referring to basic VoIP features such as voicemail messages as a .wav file in your email. True UC is much more than that," said Louis Hayner, Chief Sales Officer, Alteva. "Alteva's UC product with the full suite of Microsoft Communication Services products integrated with Voice over IP phone service, allows for a truly cloud-based UC environment where basic business-based technology like voice is combined with office communications such as instant messenger, video conferencing, desktop sharing, telepresence, etc. This capability is changing the landscape of enterprise businesses, creating unprecedented productivity enhancements."


Product Availability and Pricing
For such a comprehensive UC solution, their pricing is amazingly reasonable. Alteva has just launched a Web store, where organizations with less than 25 users can easily select the right UC solution to suit their needs. Alteva has designed four different UC packages from which small businesses can choose from including its UC Complete bundle that allows users to realize the benefits of a fully-integrated, HD voice-enabled unified communications solution (priced from $38 per user, per month), Alteva Collaboration & Voice Communications (priced from $25 per user, per month), Alteva Desktop and Expanded Collaboration (priced from $28 per user, per month) and Alteva Desktop Communications Basic (priced from $15 per user, per month). Alteva also offers a la carte purchasing options for those who seek only to purchase Exchange email, OCS or Alteva's hosted VoIP.