Tags: Broadband in India, Tata

VSNL collaborates with Microsoft to launch web conferencing service

Tata owned VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) has announced that they are entering into collaboration with software giants Microsoft. They would together be entering into the web conferencing market together. The companies today unveiled the Tata Indicom web conferencing service based on the Microsoft Office Live Meeting Platform.

This service would be a hosted software solution that minimizes infrastructure and set up requirements and lets people collaborate and share information like presentations and documents and conduct virtual meetings from anywhere using a PC and an internet connection. This would provide a cost-saving alternative to business travel for particularly those in the SMB sector.

VSNL is entering into this segment for the first time ever and it would be made available to the customers throughout India almost immediately. Kishor Chaukar, managing director, Tata Industries, and director, VSNL said in a statement: “Armed with the combined strength of VSNL and Microsoft Office Live Meeting, our endeavor will be to deliver the next generation of real time communication to enterprises in India. Our latest offering will enable our customers to meet the twin objectives of enhancing team communication and reducing travel time. This alliance is in keeping with our objective of offering end-to-end managed services to our customers.”

The service will be available in two versions - standard and professional - through four variations:
Named user license (fixed and dedicated capacity for unlimited meetings)
Room license (”always on” meeting room)
Monthly minute license (pay per use)
Shared seat license (pool of seats for multiple use).

For future plans, both these companies plan to focus on other areas including next generation converged voice, data, messaging and video services; managed hosted ‘info-comm’ services and deployment of service delivery platforms for the provision of subscription based instant video and music packages over broadband, and multimedia streaming over broadband and dial up networks.