SUNNYVALE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/14/12 -- NextPlane, Inc. (www.nextplane.net), the market leader in cloud-based federation services for unified communications (UC), is now offering free Google federation to organizations using Microsoft OCS, Microsoft Lync, or IBM Sametime. NextPlane shortens the time it takes to setup federation with Google to less than a day, and eliminates the hassle of installing and configuring an XMPP gateway. NextPlane's cloud-based service does not require any on-premise hardware or software component.

Unlike using XMPP gateways from Microsoft or IBM, end-users benefit from a richer feature set, such as presence, and enhanced presence (custom presence states and activity-based presence). Moreover, IT organizations benefit from greater reliability and scalability, access to usage reports, and 24/7 service availability with no hidden costs. Google federation is being offered as part of free membership in UC Exchange, a cloud-based UC federation service that allows members to find, connect, and collaborate with other federation-ready organizations. Companies who upgrade to a paid subscription to the NextPlane UC Exchange federation service can access additional features including voice and video federation with Google (a feature unique to NextPlane), and federation with other UC platforms, social media, and Skype.

"Our free Google federation for organizations with a Microsoft or IBM unified communications platform gives users a significantly better real time collaboration experience," said Farzin Shahidi, founder and CEO of NextPlane. "By using NextPlane UC Exchange, IT departments can go beyond the serious limitations of Inter-vendor UC interoperability solutions which are not being addressed by UC vendors."

In addition to the free Google federation service organizations can access to the UC Exchange Management Portal to search the UC Exchange Members Directory of over 100 "federation ready" organizations, accept inbound federation requests at a no additional charge, and get access to usage reports.

For more information, visit www.nextplane.net/get-started.php or contact sales at sales@nextplane.net.

About NextPlane

NextPlane, Inc., is the provider of "UC Exchange," a cloud based community focused federation service for unified communications (UC). UC Exchange enables member organizations to find, connect, and collaborate with business partners across a wide range of UC platforms and includes powerful features such as UC Federation Services, centralized Members Directory, Social Media Federation, and Skype Federation. Using a unique federation management portal, organizations can search a member's directory for federation-ready partners; manage federation requests and access reporting and analytic tools.

UC Exchange Federation Services enable seamless federation across Microsoft Lync, OCS and LCS, Cisco Jabber XCP, Unified Presence Server (CUPS) and WebEx Messenger (formerly Cisco WebEx Connect), IBM Sametime, Google Apps, Jive OpenFire, Isode M-Link and eJabberd. Organizations can connect users from different companies regardless of their underlying UC platform -- with enhanced presence, instant messaging, multi-user chat, voice and video -- all as if they are on the same UC platform. Moreover, UC Exchange enables its member organizations to federate their UC platforms with social business communities such as Yammer, Salesforce.com's Chatter, Twitter, Skype, LinkedIn, and XMPP hosted chat rooms.

For more information please visit www.nextplane.net, or contact sales at sales@nextplane.net.

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