May 26, 2010

Avistar and SoTel Sign Distribution Agreement

By Anil Sharma
TMCnet Contributor

Avistar Communications Corp., a major player in unified visual communications solutions, has signed a hosted service provider distribution agreement with SoTel Systems, a wholesale supplier of business communications products and Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) services, which will provide the Avistar C3 Communicator solution to the small- and medium-sized business marketplace as a hosted business-class desktop videoconferencing service.

"With successful deployments ranging from small regional businesses to large global corporations, while delivering truly unrivaled price/performance in the desktop videoconferencing industry, Avistar (News - Alert) wanted to work with an innovative partner to make desktop videoconferencing available to a wider swath of small- and medium-sized businesses as a robust hosted offering," said Stephen Epstein (News - Alert), CMO, Avistar, in a statement.

Epstein said that SoTel's 30-year history, its proven track record in delivering SIP-based hosted solutions, and its reputation for top-notch support, training and service to its resellers made the choice crystal clear.

James F. Goebel, CEO, SoTel Systems (News - Alert), said that unified communications solutions are in great demand today, and small businesses require business-class, not consumer-class, desktop videoconferencing.

Goebel said that Avistar delivers commercial-grade desktop videoconferencing while SoTel puts the solutions in the hands of the resellers and in turn, their customers.

"Additionally, this agreement allows us to deploy this unified communications feature the way we think all products will be distributed in the future, as a hosted offering through the cloud", he said.

Officials with SoTel said that the company's resellers will offer hosted desktop videoconferencing for a low monthly fee, making available an exciting, commercial-grade video solution at a great value.

Company officials said that in addition to this standard, business-class offering, SoTel will offer other hosted videoconferencing options, such as private virtual secure clusters for government agencies and other organizations that require even higher levels of security due to the nature of their work. 

Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anil's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Alice Straight