CounterPath, a 2019 Overall Best of Enterprise Connect Award finalist for its Bria Teams cloud UC and collaboration service, this week introduced a Pro version as well updates for the standard package.
With Bria Teams Pro, CounterPath continues its repositioning from softphone to UC as-a-service (UCaaS) provider, Todd Carothers, the company’s EVP of sales, marketing and product, told me during a No Jitter briefing. It follows on the Bria Teams debut of late last year, which introduced secure team messaging, integrated file sharing, screen sharing, team voice and video calls, and presence on desktops and mobile devices.
The primary new feature added with Bria Teams Pro is the ability to assign a dedicated virtual meeting room to each user account, Carothers said. This capability is indicative of a trend the company has seen among small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) -- and is manifest in other industry moves, such as cloud video provider Zoom’s decision to beef up its video conferencing service with enterprise voice and other collaboration functions. “SMEs want collaboration, but they don’t want to switch from outbound calling straightaway because they have contracts in place. … They have this quest for a single solution, but still have this third-party issue,” he explained.
And that’s OK by CounterPath, since the Bria Teams solutions integrate with SIP services and corporate PBXs. The Bria Teams solutions overlay virtual and cloud PBX services, for example, meaning customers can use collaboration features within Bria Teams and their existing telephony for outbound calling, Carothers said. (While internal team calls rely on the Bria Teams functionality.)
In addition to the virtual meeting rooms, Bria Teams Pro supports HD video conferencing -- 1080p for desktop and 720p for mobile -- for up to 200 internal or external participants, Carothers said. Video settings are adjustable, allowing use of a grid view for team meetings, a focused view for customer calls, and townhall presentation for all-hands events, for example. And hosts have a range of management functions at their disposals, including the ability to view and manage participant capabilities, assign presenter control, trigger muting for participants, and assign PIN access to a session.
Bria Teams Pro also supports HD audio conferencing for up to 200 participants, integrated screen sharing and messaging within meeting rooms, Web browser viewing and audio for users without Bria Teams, and server-based secure conference recording with cloud storage. Meeting hosting and presenter capabilities are available on any device running Bria Teams Pro.
Bria Teams Pro will be generally available later this month, and SMEs can start with a 30-day free trial if they’d like. Those companies that want to jump right in can select between an annual billing plan at $9.95 per user, per month or monthly billing at $14.95 per user, per month, Carothers said.
If you’re attending Enterprise Connect, which takes place next week in Orlando, Fla., be sure to attend our Tuesday morning Best of Enterprise Connect Award presentation to see if Bria Teams wins, and check out the solutions for yourself at CounterPath’s booth, 1205.
If you haven’t registered for Enterprise Connect, it’s not too late -- and as a No Jitter reader you can even still get $200 off your pass by using the code NJPOSTS at checkout.
