Smoothstone Unveils Smoothstone Meeting Center

LOUISVILLE, Ky (July 20, 2007) — Smoothstone IP Communications, the leading provider of managed enterprise IP communications, unveiled today a new service called “Smoothstone Meeting Center” — an indispensible, enterprise–class, Web–based collaboration tool that allows users to communicate and collaborate with anyone over the Internet, regardless of physical location.

Businesses can now increase their productivity and avoid unnecessary travel through an easy–to–use, yet incredibly powerful Webinar platform. Smoothstone Meeting Center enables any individual to make a multi–media, audio and video presentations; share files, documents and applications; share a white board; chat and take collective notes; poll the meeting participants; and make presentations to large groups (or just one person); all without the need for special hardware, software or administrators. Anyone can easily deliver online presentations, conduct seminars and training sessions, or collaborate one–on–one with anyone else who has a broadband connected computer.

“Web collaboration is an indispensable tool that accelerates all kinds of business processes, while simultaneously reducing costs,” said Russ Maney, VP of Marketing with Smoothstone. “Highly effective meetings and working sessions can now take place without everyone having to spend time and money travelling to the same place. They can enjoy the convenience and flexibility of a phone call, but with the visual impact of a face–to–face, across–the–same–table meeting. When we were testing this new service internally, our own salespeople quickly wondered how they ever did without it.”

Smoothstone Meeting Center makes online collaboration easy and affordable, through a very intuitive user interface and two different pricing options. Anyone who can use a Web browser can use this collaboration tool without assistance. Frequent users can buy monthly subscriptions for a flat, per user per month fee with unlimited usage. Less frequent users can pay per minute per session member. Neither pricing model requires users be clients of Smoothstone´s other services.

In addition to enabling true, real time collaboration through document, desktop, whiteboard and application sharing, as well as through real time chat and notes taking, content can be uploaded and stored in an online library for future use with different groups or for recurring training sessions and sales presentations. Users can also share past sessions with others who didn't participate in the original session, by posting full audio and video session recordings for future listening and viewing.

Smoothstone Meeting Center also has functions that help meeting organizers and presenters measure the success of their efforts in real time. They can monitor session attendance, follow viewer statistics for each slide in a presentation, and conduct opinion polls and quizzes, all without interrupting the flow of the session.

Other convenience features of the Smoothstone Meeting Center include:

  • Personalized, custom URLs for each session

  • Attendee list and attendee status displays

  • Q&A functionality

  • Multi–point video capabilities, so all Webcam enabled session members can see each other, if they wish

  • Toll–free numbers for administrator and participant audio

  • Session security assurance, through private conference ID and PINs for audio and optional moderator entrance approval requirements for joining sessions


About Smoothstone IP Communications:

Smoothstone IP Communications is a nationwide provider of unified IP communications services to mid-sized enterprises. Smoothstone delivers Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), IP trunking, unified threat management, MPLS networking, contact center solutions, messaging and advanced collaboration tools as a unified suite of managed services and cloud based applications. Smoothstone´s scalable, on–demand applications & services can be integratedwith a customer´s existing network and telecommunications infrastructure, operational processes and employee activities, enabling a customer to migrate to unified IP communications as their business requirements dictate. For more information, visit www.smoothstone.com or call (800) 773.3037.