Irving, Texas, March 21, 2012 – NEC Corporation of America (NEC) today made public its plans to launch UNIVERGE Cloud Services, a set of enhanced Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings recently announced by NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) to help businesses improve IT operations, worker productivity and cash flow to thrive in a competitive global economy.

The initial UNIVERGE Cloud Services SaaS offering is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), a comprehensive suite of voice, data and video services that features a simple, Web-based end-user client that is deployable across any device, whether on a PC, smartphone or tablet.
Launching in Q2 of calendar 2012, UNIVERGE Cloud Services UCaaS will be offered in three simple packages – basic, standard and premium – specifically designed to be offered through our extensive network of authorized dealers and directly from NEC’s enterprise sales group. At its core, the UCaaS offering leverages UNIVERGE 3C, NEC’s recently announced software-based unified communications and collaboration solution that is adaptable to private, hybrid and public-cloud deployment models, as well as an evolving ecosystem of partners.

“Our large dealer network has become a trusted resource for enterprise communications technology over the years. As our industry is transitioning from infrastructure to software to services-base models, so will our dealers,” said Larry Levenberg, Vice President, Channel Sales and Marketing, NEC Enterprise Technologies. “UNIVERGE Cloud Services leverage the best that NEC has to offer from the high-performance infrastructure at its core, to UC software platform to the service delivery and options available through our dealer network or directly from NEC’s enterprise sales organization.”

UNIVERGE Cloud Services UCaaS features a wide array of user options, including IP telephony, unified messaging, audio and video conferencing, Web collaboration, mobility, presence and IM, and even fully featured contact centers – all in a simple, service-based model designed to replace expansive capital costs with an affordable monthly fee.

“From early in the development of this project, we knew UNIVERGE Cloud Services needed to leverage the best of NEC’s proven technology and to be as easy as possible for customers to use, deploy, manage and purchase,” said Jay Krauser, Director, Cloud Services, NEC Enterprise Technologies. “By leveraging our infrastructure and software at the core and surrounding ourselves with an ecosystem of partners, we’ll be bringing a service that we already know SMBs and large enterprises will find attractive.”

UNIVERGE Cloud Services SaaS offerings are delivered in geographically redundant virtualized environments powered by NEC’s proven cloud infrastructure for mission-critical performance, including:

Express5800 series Scalable Enterprise Servers for premium performance

Express5800 series Fault Tolerant Servers for high availability and reliability

Express5800 series General Purpose Servers for consolidation

M-Series Storage Disk Arrays for advanced SAN storage with reduced power consumption and thin provisioning enabling ideal capacity distribution in virtualized environments