TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Taiwanese local computer giant Acer is transforming from a hardware provider into a mixed hardware, software, and solutions provider. Acer teamed up with the customer service and contact center software and services provider Octon in a bid to roll out affordable telephone network solutions for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Since this May, Acer debuted the Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC) service to show its diversity in transforming from a simply hardware provider to keep up with the trend, and so far it has 20 partners from all works of life.
Acer cooperated with Octon, which means Acer has stepped into the telecommunications field, and will provide the new Computing and Communication (C&C) cloud era.
Acer Founder and Honorary Chairperson Stan Shih said, “in the late August iCloud leak that posed a threat to cloud security, and for most of the IT SMEs, one who always has two phones, one is for work, and one is for private use,” the new products that integrates Acer's BYOC applications with Octon's solutions based on private branch exchange (PBX), a private telephone network used within a company, will solve all these problems.
“A subsidiary called Acer Octon Inc. is being established to run the new business that offers Acer customers easier access to secure and cloud-based PBX services, such as multi-party conference calls or video meetings on mobile devices,” Shih said.
“As Acer made PC an affordable product for everyone, Acer is going to popularized PBX in the next, and seeking the concrete value out of it.” Shih added.
However, the end product that is entitled with “abPBX plus” is expected to be demonstrated in December at the annual IT Month in Taiwan, and will be put into production with affordable prices in the first quarter of 2015, and will initially target Taiwan's financial sector.
The abPBX plus has many built-in APPs, such as abChat, abConfCall, abConfRoom, abContactCenter, and abViertualPBX. In conclusion, the abPBX plus has the following features, namely, cloud ready, carrier ready, enterprise VoIP platform, scalable, high available, secure, easy to maintain, intuitive, and cost reduction.


