Mike Frayne, CEO at VOSS Solutions, commented; “We are delighted to become part of this important industry organization. VOSS prides itself in its open architectural approach that inherently supports UC interoperability. Today VOSS offers a fulfillment management system that provides a “single pane of glass” view of the multi-vendor UC environment. VOSS orchestrates the provisioning and activation of UC services across a range of UC vendors and network vendors, maintaining multiple data stores and the linkage between User-Device-Service-Network, all in real-time. VOSS eases migration and the rapid roll out of new services, and radically reduces operational expenditure and IT support costs.”

“Interoperability is not only critical to customer success for deploying unified communications but intrinsic to the delivery of legacy, current and next-generation UC services and infrastructure from multiple vendors. Until now, efforts to achieve interoperability have appeared ad-hoc, which has given customers little assurance that their existing and planned investments are protected and will deliver the value promised,” said Jonathan Edwards, research analyst, Unified Communications, IDC. “I’m delighted to see VOSS Solutions take a leading role by joining the UCIF. Together, these companies will help drive industry wide adoption of open standards and develop programs that put accountability on the vendors and provide peace of mind and investment protection for end customers – something that will surely accelerate adoption of UC technologies.”

The UCIF will work with existing industry standards, identifying and filling the gaps between current protocols and interoperability issues that have stalled broad adoption and deployment of valuable communications methods. UCIF membership is open to hardware and software solution providers, service providers and network operators. For more information or to join the UCIF, visit www.ucif.org.

Simon Muderack, Tribold's CEO said: "Working with Gen-i we see a joint drive from both their Business and IT leadership on cycle time reduction, costs of operations, and bringing more fast track products into the market. These goals are directly aligned with where Tribold EPM can bring real value to our users. We look forward to working together with the Gen-i team delivering these tangible improvements to their enterprise product range".

To help local candidates get elected and spread the party’s messages, volunteers can now work securely with other people online and access training documents and artwork. During the general election campaign, the Liberal Democrats’ Media Intelligence Unit, set up by the party’s press office, also established a 24 hour media monitoring rota so that press coverage could be analysed and media feedback recorded. All press articles were stored in Huddle to ensure that everyone could view the media’s response to the party’s campaign efforts.

Prior to deploying Huddle, the Liberal Democrats were relying on email and an extranet to communicate across teams. Recognising that the internal IT system was struggling to cope with the volume of emails and it was difficult to share files with people outside of the party, the Liberal Democrats chose Huddle to improve collaboration and connect with party colleagues, volunteers and conference organisers.

“It was becoming increasingly apparent that the party needed to replace its ailing extranet with technology that could be tailored for different teams,” said Sam Lockwood, Web & E-Communications Technology Manager, Liberal Democrats. “While Huddle was initially deployed for file sharing, we quickly realised that it has multiple other functions and groups across the party are now using it to manage projects, organise conferences and have discussions. Our Federal Conference Committee, which is responsible for running our two annual conferences, uses Huddle to manage and organise these events with external support staff. Huddle’s flexibility has enabled the party to realise the benefits of cloud computing and increase efficiencies. ”

The Liberal Democrats’ Policy Response Unit has set up an online workspace from which parliamentary candidates can access and search for required policy information. A workspace has also been established to meet the specific needs of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, so that members have access to Scottish policy briefings and responses.

“Recognising the value of using social media in politics following Barack Obama’s successful election campaign in 2008, the 2010 British general election saw all three mainstream parties use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to reach and engage voters,” said Alastair Mitchell, Co-founder andCEO, Huddle. “This year, we’ve already seen a big increase in government departments and organisations deploying Web 2.0 internally to boost communication and increase efficiency. The Liberal Democrats have placed Web 2.0 at the heart of party communications and we expect more organisations to follow suit and deploy tools that help them to work better together and save money.”

Huddle currently has 60 per cent government penetration, including customers such as the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.