This content is part of the Conference Coverage: Enterprise Connect 2018 conference coverage

New Masergy UCaaS feature helps avoid overpayments

Masergy UCaaS customers can use their human resource applications to automate adding and deleting UCaaS users. The new feature can avoid overpayments.

Masergy has introduced technology that helps companies avoid paying too much for the service provider's unified communications-as-a-service product.

Masergy introduced this week a RESTful API that lets customers connect Microsoft Active Directory or the online version of human resource applications to the company's Global UCaaS product. The integration automates the process of adding or deleting Masergy UCaaS users.

Masergy customers often fail to sign into the company's online management portal to delete employees who have left the company, Masergy said. As a result, customers end up paying for non-existent UCaaS users.

By automating the process, whenever a company updates an employee's HR profile to show he has left, then "the corresponding user in the call platform is removed," Masergy said in an emailed statement.

Masergy unveiled the RESTful API at the Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando. Fla. Companies can connect to the Masergy API any software-as-a-service HR application that supports RESTful APIs. Examples of those applications include ServiceNow, Workday Inc. and BambooHR.

Masergy has built Global UCaaS on the BroadSoft platform BroadWorks, which provides IP telephony, team collaboration and audio, video and web conferencing. Cisco acquired BroadSoft in February for $1.9 billion.

Masergy UCaaS sales strategy

Masergy focuses on selling Global UCaaS, along with its software-defined WAN and security services, to midsize companies with a global footprint, according to Gartner's latest UCaaS Magic Quadrant. Masergy's focus on sizeable companies is in line with Gartner's findings that UCaaS technology, in general, has matured to the point where large enterprises with global locations should consider the service.

Masergy, AT&T and Verizon are examples of U.S. companies that run BroadSoft's UCaaS platform in their data centers and sell the service through channel partners. Masergy's service is well-suited for organizations with between 100 and 2,500 employees, the Gartner report said.

Most Masergy UCaaS customers use the product's core telephony services only. "While Masergy offers a full range of UC functions, the adoption of web conferencing, video conferencing and contact center is just starting to take off," Gartner said.

Meanwhile, the global number of new UCaaS subscriber seats rose 16% last year from 2016, according to Synergy Research Group, based in Reno, Nev. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Ring Central and Mitel together accounted for more than half of the 300,000 new subscriber seats.

"UCaaS is gaining market acceptance momentum with large businesses and enterprises," Synergy chief analyst Jeremy Duke said in a statement.

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