Unified Comms Suite From Star Targets SME Market

Businesses that need mobile access to company information but do not wish to invest in the hardware, software and maintenance are being targeted by UK firm Star.

The WorkLife Productivity Suite is a managed Software as a Service (SaaS) bundle offering email, managed email, instant messaging, presence, collaboration, conferencing and telephony. The service is charged at a fixed price of £45 per month for each user.

Microsoft And BroadSoft Based

As a SaaS offering, customers can access the service from anywhere over the Internet without having to worry about upgrades, making it ideal for the small or medium-sized business, the company said.

The software is based on Microsoft products such as Exchange, Sharepoint and the Office Communications Server. According to Star, this makes it instantly compatible with Microsoft’s Office Suite, further simplifying the integration process.

Hugo Harber, director of convergence and network strategy at Star believes that the unified service pricing makes hidden costs visible.

“Many companies have little clarity of their true communications costs, as new converged services, home working and departmental deployments have muddied the water and made them difficult to measure,” he said.

Fixed pricing

He moved on to say that the fixed pricing also makes budgeting easier. With individual services, the costs can vary with each monthly bill.

“This service is so easy to budget for because it has a single and predictable monthly cost, and this makes it affordable for most SMEs,” he explained.

SaaS is particularly applicable to a business with a mobile sales force but sometimes knowing who is available and when can be a problem. In WorkLife, the presence feature shows when people are online and available rather than having to leave messages and co-ordinate calls.

The suite provides a subscription service to the Microsoft products and the telephony services from BroadSoft.