History

Geka Telecom, Algoria and Aastra′s dynamic partner for all emerging markets invited Algoria to present TWP during an Aastra 5000 training seminar. For Algoria, it was the perfect opportunity to prospect new international markets and to discover the current gusto for CTI and unified communications applications in Africa: Within one week after the seminar the majority of the participants had ordered their TWP distribution kit!

Already highly present in Eastern Europe via the group Aastra and their subsidiary companies, Algoria pursues further export development in Eastern Europe and in the other emerging counties via Geka Telecom. In Hungary, Telmo is Aastra and Geka Telecom′s representative, and they believe strongly in TWP.

This presentation is in line with the international sales development of TWP. Progressively available on all Aastra platforms (who have become No1 in Europe for business telephony after the successive buy outs of Ascotel, EADS Telecoms, DeTeWe and Ericsson), TWP is creating a growing interest in the different markets covered by Aastra: The British market is no exception, a market with huge potential for CTI and unified communications applications.

These TWP version 3.1 demonstrations which were successively shown to 90 Danish distributers, 30 German distributers and 60 Norwegian distributers were hailed and applauded by the participants each and every time. With Aastra′s successive buy outs of diverse telephony platforms, such as NeXspan, Ascotel, and Ericsson, the demand for Aastra was to integrate these different technologies and release common, coherent solutions for all platforms. Our multi-platform demonstrations carried out responded fully to this need: showing a TWP server not only piloting an Aastra 5000 and an Ascotel Intelligate simultaneously, but also sharing information (chat, presence management, telephone supervision, videoconference etc) between users connected to either the Aastra 5000 or the Ascotel. The participants could see the benefits of TWP′s architecture clearly and further confirms the international potential of TWS.

The migration of TWS onto the Cisco business telephony platform was undertaken as a part of Algoria′s multi-platform strategy. This migration (strategic for Algoria) was made possible within the framework of Cisco TDP (Technology Developer Program) using Cisco′s API (JTAPI and AXL) and processes recommended by Cisco. Thanks to the successful outcome of this strategy, Algoria presented the very first TWS suite capable of piloting telephony in a Cisco infrastructure to the Cisco France team on 16th September. Highly demanded by our network of distributers, this migration also generated lively interest from Cisco, for whom the availability of a CTI solution 100% thin client, with a Soft phone module, is an interesting complement to the current telephony and business communications products that they have today. Further information concerning TWS on Cisco systems will soon follow, notably the final validation of TWS in line with TDP (Expected to happen in the first quarter 2009).

Whilst Aastra France′s sales teams are the leading TWP sales force in the world, they are also the most exigent when it comes to the evolution of TWP and were thus the first to witness a demo of TWP v3.1 in it′s advanced beta phase. A new Flash interface for Windows, Mac and Linux: new unified communication and collaboration functionalities (multipoint audio and video conferencing, chat, SMS, presence status, etc). The enthusiastic welcome for TWP v3.1 from the Aastra France sales teams appears to confirm that TWP Version 3.1 responds to the market′s desires.

Conforming to standards, open, and available on Aastra 5000 right from its launch, the applicative TWP product range naturally fitted into the Aastra 5000 road show programme. In less than two weeks, more than 120 of Aastra Germany′s partners had the chance to see a demonstration done by Algoria, thus experiencing TWP in the fullest detail, and even got a preview of what the future version 3.1 of TWP will look like.

This presentation is in line with Aastra′s choice to expand TWP sales internationally. Available on NeXspan, Aastra 5000, Ericsson, and with the arrival of version 3.1, Ascotel, TWP is at the heart of Aastra′s multi-platform applicative strategy, as Aastra has become the European No1 for business telephony after the successive buy outs of Ascotel, EADS Telecoms, DeTeWe and Ericsson. This presentation sparked interest in the sales and pre-sales teams of Aastra Germany, who know that the German market is keen for CTI and unified communications applications: a good sign for the potential development of TWP in Germany.

Whilst at SPIE Communications, from 2000 to 2005, Jérôme Remars was one of the very first to sell TWS when it was released in 2002. Spotted for his capability to propose and integrate high technology solutions, Jérôme Remars joined NTT Europe in 2005, where he developed the integration activity, notably for the Cisco product range (telephony, mobility and security). Today, Jérôme Remars puts this experience, ability and dynamism to use at Algoria. The arrival of Jérôme Remars will evidently accelerate TWS sales in the French market, but will also allow Marc Chartier, Algoria’s Sales Director, to focus more on the international development of Algoria.