4PSA is launching a point-and-click service-builder platform for wholesale partners looking to create and manage a VoIP service, which it has dubbed the VoipNow Service Provider Edition.
VoipNow SPE replaces the company’s VoipNow Professional line and is part of 4PSA’s strategy to create integrated, end-to-end platforms. The new software is capable to run distributed service across multiple computing nodes that can be provisioned in a public or private cloud infrastructure, but also includes the Web tools that administrators need in order to manage such deployments.
“Throughout the development of VoipNow SPE, a lot of effort has been invested into identifying all the elements that would make our customers more successful and efficient,” said Bogdan Carstoiu, 4PSA’s CEO. “We focused on three main areas: infrastructure, customer service and automation. On the infrastructure side, we included the Cloud Manager that provides assistance in distributed deployments, we addressed the customer flexibility with a new API and Apps support, and we included all automation tools previously bundled with a different product (VoipNow Automation) in VoipNow SPE, at no additional cost.”
When it comes to telephony, an intelligent call route selection chooses the best telephony trunking provider based on criteria such as time of call, destination, price, and availability. The ENUM routing support is fully configurable, and if a destination is not available through ENUM, it will be called through the telephony trunking provider, which is normally selected by the routing engine. The carrier-grade SIP server provides high-performance SIP router and proxy, register and presence functionality. With the SIP trunking functionality, providers can connect customer PBXs to the VoipNow infrastructure and assign them telephony resources such as DIDs, trunks and call control functionality.
And, finally, VoipNow SPE can be integrated with any national portability databases, using the open APIs available for this purpose. VoipNow SPE also allows users to charge calls based on the telephony network of the destination number.
Meanwhile, the new UnifiedAPI is a new generation REST and Web Sockets-capable API that allows app developers to interface with the communication facilities exposed by VoipNow SPE. It includes app management, which features authentication, authorization and resource access.
“We realized that it is not enough to build a modern API based on open standards and consistent across all services,” Carstoiu added. “The most important thing is that UnifiedAPI allows developers to access communication channels from their applications in minutes. Are you developing a CRM? Do you want it to offer enterprise level phone support? Just add a few lines of code.”
The new edition comes with more than 100 new features, such as extension virtualization expanding traditional enterprise mobility patterns, out-of-the-box Microsoft Lync integration, support for Amazon S3 storage, intelligent call queues and so on. The automation functionality included in VoipNow SPE covers customer business processes such as order management, billing and payments, and VoipNow’s real-time, multi-level, reseller-friendly charging engine is an important functionality for service providers who want to optimize the cost of phone services for their customers.
