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e/pop Web & Video Conferencing
Brings IP-based Communications
to AnyWare Group’s Role Oriented Access Management
System
Business doesn’t stop once you walk out of the office
door. Mobile phones, PDAs, and numerous wireless devices
support business continuity regardless of location,
travel delays, weather-related office and road closures.
At any given point in time, business deals around the
world are being worked from a coffee shop, hotel, or
airport gate. Mobility is one of the main premises
behind AnyWare Group’s Role Oriented Access Management
(ROAM) system. ROAM, offered as a managed service,
creates an office without boundaries, a truly mobile
office that allows you to securely access the resources
and data when you need them most.
According to the Vice President of Marketing and
Development, Rick MacPhee, “ROAM is a secure
communications infrastructure that customers use to
bring all of their community of interests together in
one place, a portal, where they can share information.”
As a communications infrastructure, ROAM provides tools
for user administration, auditing and reporting and
enhanced security features like Two Factor
Authentication and End Point Control. But it was lacking
some vital functionality (web and video conferencing)
that would enhance its capabilities as a communications
infrastructure for the healthcare, and other industries.
With initial plans to add a web and video conferencing
feature, George Hubley, director of product management
and development, set out to find a suitable web and
video conferencing software it could integrate into ROAM
with minimal pain and suffering.
Hubley found WiredRed’s e/pop Web and Video Conferencing
during a standard web search, but also received rave
reviews from a partner company in the U.S. that uses
e/pop as well.
Located in New Brunswick, Canada, AnyWare Group
personnel travel frequently to visit customers in the
U.S. and other countries around the world. AnyWare
employees also depend on ROAM as their “mobile office”
to access important documents and other information when
they’re on the road.
“We use ROAM, and now e/pop, extensively,” explains
Hubley. “Not long ago I was in Dallas visiting a
customer and was pulled into a sales meeting with a
coworker visiting Southern California. Sure enough, I
found a wireless connection in the Dallas airport,
logged onto ROAM and via an encrypted connection
downloaded a PowerPoint presentation from my office
desktop computer and shared it with the potential
customer and coworker by using e/pop. Location didn’t
matter, we were able to dissolve geographic boundaries
with the combination of ROAM and e/pop.”
While AnyWare Group had been previously taking advantage
of application, desktop and document sharing in e/pop to
demonstrate ROAM to potential customers, generally
hospital or medical group administrators, groups of
physicians and heads of medical departments, e/pop is
now tightly integrated into ROAM and re-branded ROAM
Secure Conferencing.
Because AnyWare’s current target market is the
healthcare industries in North America, security is a
priority, and ROAM addresses security with SSL, VPN
security and Identity management. All ROAM users are
assigned roles, and the information you can access
varies according to that role.
“We will offer e/pop, as part of ROAM, in the first
quarter of next year,” adds MacPhee. “Conferencing is a
great value-added feature for ROAM. It gives our
customers the extra convenience of on-demand
conferencing and communications.”
e/pop strengthens the ROAM offering by adding a
real-time communications capability it didn’t have
before.
“Our customers will simply click on a tab to launch
conferencing from within ROAM,” explains Hubley. “With
the integration of e/pop, ROAM allows not only secure
access to email, calendar functions and remote access to
data on the office network, it also allows the user to
instantly start or join a conference with just a
high-speed Internet connection.”
Video conferencing is no longer a boardroom-only luxury,
IP-based web and video conferencing is experiencing
growing popularity and adoption in organizations of all
sizes, from small start-ups to Global 1000 enterprises.
These organizations can now take advantage of desktop
conferencing, with off-the shelf PCs, web cameras and
audio headsets, to reach other users anywhere in the
world.
“There is no doubt – web and video conferencing is
beginning to join the phone, email and wireless devices
as part of the business communications mix,” said
MacPhee. “The mindset is changing little by little. Some
still think conferencing is very complex, requires
specialized expensive hardware and advance scheduling.
It’s not like that at all, e/pop is as easy to use as
any search engine or Office application."
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PDF version with summary tables |
