CommuniGate Systems (News - Alert), a company that specializes in rich media Internet communications solutions, announced Tuesday the latest version of its Flash-based, unified communications messaging and content delivery client.

 

Pronto! 1.5, the client that goes along with CommuniGate’s Pro platform, provides a rich media environment in which end-users can conduct various types of communications sessions and access media and entertainment content like videos and ringtones.

 

Jon Doyle (News - Alert), vice president of business development at CommuniGate, told TMCnet that three main enhancements are being delivers with Pronto! 1.5: media and entertainment capabilities (providers operators with a content delivery client that works on any platform), modular framework (allows different features, or modules, to be turned on or off and to be customer-built) and VoIP phone capability (enables online phone calls).

 

“Pronto! is designed to be modular and flexible,” Doyle said. “It can be tailored to fit the needs of two different types of subscribers—business and consumer.”

 

The biggest change with Pronto! 1.5 is the media and entertainment capabilities. Previously, CommuniGate’s solutions were focused on messaging, voice calls and IM—what Doyle described as bread-and-butter communications products. The company expanded the capabilities of Pronto! in response to market demand.

 

Doyle explained that many operators are now looking to get into the media/entertainment delivery business because bandwidth is becoming commoditized. To compete, carriers must offer value-adds to their network services. One of the hottest markets is for content like ringtones, MP3s and videos.

 

“Pronto! enables carriers to sell that content, or provide it on an advertising-supported basis, and have an interface that can display all of it,” Doyle told TMCnet.

 

Doyle also stressed the advantages of Pronto! being built on Flash, especially now that Flash 9 allows playback of high-definition video (HD264) and audio (AAC3).

 

“Our competitors really don’t have a comparable interface,” he said.

 

He added that Pronto! ties together messaging, telephony and media/entertainment in a single user interface.

 

“There is no other company out there that’s doing all three of those things,” Doyle told TMCnet. “Certainly nobody is doing it in Flash.”

 

He pointed out that, although many companies have tried to do similar things with Java, there are some significant drawbacks to that approach.

 

“The problem with Java is that it was intended to be cross-platform capable but never delivered on that,” Doyle said. “Also, it depends on the browser and, 95 percent of all security exploits and viruses come through browsers using JavaScript. Flash solves all of those problems. It works on any machine the same way, and it has about 99 percent penetration in the marketplace. Also, Flash natively displays video and audio.”

 

In the process of upgrading Pronto!, CommuniGate focused on current trends in the communications market, like the growing popularity of single-dashboard clients and the software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) delivery model.

 

Doyle described two major trends: widgets and media/entertainment delivery. He defined a widget as a component of one software program that is embedded into another software program. An example of a widget might be click-to-call capability added to a social network like a dating service. This type of mixing-and-matching of communication tools online is also sometimes referred to as a “mashup,” and is part of the larger Web 2.0 landscape.

 

He also noted that there is a growing movement in Hollywood to have broadband network operators deliver content like video to customers. This is a significant change from the days when network operators sold only broadband and telephony services.

 

The new version of Pronto! is part of the CommuniGate Web 2.0 Suite. It’s available as a free, “test drive” service at www.TalktoIP.com. An installable “community” version can be found at www.communigate.com/community. There, CommuniGate Pro Server and Pronto! can be used free for deployments of five accounts or fewer.

 

CommuniGate Pro is available for deployments of more than five users starting at $899 for 25 users.