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Enterprise Featured Article
June 05, 2007
CommuniGate Launches Pronto for Unified Internet Communications
By Greg Galitzine Group Editorial Director
CommuniGate has announced the availability of Pronto!
Pronto! is an Adobe Flash- and Flex2-based technology that brings together multiple forms of Internet communications and Rich Media, including e-mail, chat, calendar/scheduling, IM, and more.
CommuniGate chose Flash for a number of reasons, including security, portability, and the fact that one single technology supports a wide array of multimedia apps such as video, music, etc… in a single interface.
According to the company’s official release:
Pronto! scales to support any deployment size, and is flexible enough to meet the requirements of business or consumer subscribers. Pronto! promotes team collaboration and increases employee productivity by unlocking e-mail and other productivity tools from the desktop. Whether they are in the office, at home, or on the road, employees can access e-mail and stored data, schedule team meetings, and call colleagues from the integrated Pronto! interface. For maximum flexibility users can access pronto! from any Web browser without the need tio install client software.
I spoke with CommuniGate’s Jon Doyle, the company’s vice president of Business Development, and asked him to describe the benefits of Pronto! and how easy is it for SMBs to implement.
Said Doyle, “Pronto’s value proposition is simplification and unification.”
“Because it’s a single product from a single vendor, it is much easier to install, operate, and purchase. The price is lower too, when compared with aggregating solutions from three or four vendors’ technology, or even three or four applications from a single vendor.”
“It’s also about unification,” Doyle continued.
“During our research and development of Pronto!, we went out to businesses and walked down hallways and looked into cubicles and talked to people. We noticed that people typically had four to five pieces of software running.
“By and large they would be running some kind of e-mail and scheduling application; some kind of IM client running; some will have a soft client such as Skype (News - Alert) for making VoIP
calls; of course many people will have a Web browser open; perhaps some kind of CRM or document management application. A lot of times they’ll have a media player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player. Then the more ‘cutting edge’ people will have blog software or some software to manage a personal Web site.
calls; of course many people will have a Web browser open; perhaps some kind of CRM or document management application. A lot of times they’ll have a media player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player. Then the more ‘cutting edge’ people will have blog software or some software to manage a personal Web site.“So we looked at this and said, ‘There’s somewhere around eight or nine pieces of software that we see, and more or less everyone uses four or five of these consistently. How do we pull these together and make it easy for somebody to integrate these disparate applications? That’s the value of Pronto!”
Looking ahead to future versions of Pronto!, Doyle shared some insight into the possible evolution of the solution, including a version of Pronto! for mobile users (to be called Rapido) as well as enhanced features such as radio technology, IPTV technology, and “some other cool things.”
technology, and “some other cool things.”According to Doyle, the target date for version 1.2 is some time at the end of June, and the company is targeting the end of September for 1.5.
To check out a demo of Pronto! visit CommuniGate’s Global Online Community on TMCnet.
