Toshiba America’s telecom division has released its UCedge unified communications solution, available via channel partners. It offers interoperability between Toshiba phone systems (naturally) but also third-party devices — including smartphones, tablets and Windows and Mac computers.
“UCedge puts your desktop business phone in your pocket by turning your Android or Apple smartphones or tablets into multimedia office productivity tools,” said Brian Metherell, vice president and general manager of the division. “With the UCedge mobile client, your Android and Apple devices double as extensions of the business phone system, doing the tasks you would expect from your business telephone, including unified communications.”
The UCedge client allows workers to use personal or business mobile devices as a business phone extension, with one-number reach, in or out of the office or out of the country. It also protects mobile number privacy by displaying only the office phone number in caller ID. Other features include visual voicemail, instant messaging, presence, contact lists that are synchronized with the office phone system and user-provided avatars, and long-distance and international calls to contacts from a cell phone at landline rates.
“Toshiba’s new UCedge client application enables feature parity across all device types, including smartphones, tablets, mobile and desktop computers. This is an advantage over many communications vendors that offer a full feature set with a Windows desktop client but only a subset of these features with client applications for supported mobile devices,” said Sandra Gustavsen, analyst at G Business Systems.
