Vertical Communications (News - Alert) recently released new software for Wave IP, the company’s lead telephony system for the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market and larger distributed organizations. The latest Wave IP 5.0 focuses on three general areas that include offering a wider range of user endpoints to meet a range of use cases, adding new applications and features that improve employee productivity and business operations and further reducing the total cost of ownership.

Perhaps most intriguing, due to the high interest and trend toward hosted/cloud solutions, is the new Vertical Updates cloud-based service that automates the software update process, ensuring that Wave IP customers keep up-to-date on the most recent security and feature releases. According to the company, Vertical Updates is a significant improvement over the previous process to update Wave IP which involved a lengthier, more delayed roll-out of new features—and the service is available at no charge, further adding to the product’s lower cost of ownership.

The new Vertical Updates cloud-based service marks the second cloud service available to Wave IP customers. Earlier in 2015, Vertical introduced the subscription service CRMLink that integrates Wave IP with major Web-based CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and NetSuite (News - Alert). Wave IP users simply sign up and purchase user licenses as needed; no additional software or hardware is required.

Vertical’s introduction of cloud services for Wave IP is timely and on-target. Hybrid cloud solutions are an appealing alternative for any business that wants to eliminate the expense of purchasing and installing software and/or hardware on-site and the cost of the ongoing administration and maintenance that follows. A cloud service can be up and running quickly with no need for any new infrastructure or equipment other than an Internet connection.

It's an exciting time in the enterprise communications market as we witness the shift toward subscription-based hosted/cloud services for telephony and collaboration. In this transitional period, subscribing to hosted/cloud services for some applications and using on-site solutions for others is a win-win for businesses and for the vendors that serve them. Vertical hints that, going forward, we can expect to see additional Vertical applications delivered in the cloud. Stay tuned.