This past week TMC’s (News - Alert) Carolyn J. Dawson wrote that a new $45 million Communications-as-a-Service, or CaaS, technology company will be formed by VAS Holdings and Thing5.

A set of CaaS products will be offered by the merged entity. These will be specifically available for the hospitality, travel and financial services industries.

Enterprise level, managed telecommunications and customer service systems with BPO capability will be also provided to these industries. The new company’s tools are being used at over 4,000 properties. The combined company, VAS officials claim, will “hold the top position” in the hospitality telecommunications sector.

The CEO of the new company will be David Thor, MD of Thing5. The CEO of VAS Holdings, Robert Camastro, will be the strategic advisor to the new company.

Also this week TMC’s Madhubanti Rudra wrote that Indosoft (News - Alert), a global provider of call center software for Asterisk, released the latest version of its Q-Suite Call Center ACD Software. Named Q-Suite 5.5, the new release contains features designed to enhance the value of the Indosoft’s flagship software.

The Q-Suite ACD trunk tracking module of the software received some major enhancements designed to deliver more flexibility to customer contact centers. The module enables third party developers to use Asterisk (News - Alert) for applications requiring call workflow, as well as reporting and oversight capabilities, company officials said.

Indosoft, a specialist in Computer Telephony Integration development, claims to have invested many years in developing its call center ACD software for Asterisk.

This past week, TMC’s Tracey Schelmetic reported that Unified IP business communications company Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) was named among the 2011 “Best Places to Work in Indiana” by BizVoice, Indiana's statewide general business magazine.

This is the fifth consecutive year Interactive Intelligence was ranked on the list, which is coordinated by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Interactive Intelligence moved up 12 places this year, from 16th place in 2010 to fourth place among the 36 winners in this year’s large company category.

Interactive Intelligence was founded in Indianapolis in 1994 and employs about 900 people. Today it is a publicly-traded company, posting annual 2010 revenue growth of 27 percent.

Companies chosen for the “Best Places to Work in Indiana” honor are those that “strike the right balance of taking care of employees while operating a successful organization,” according to Indiana Chamber of Commerce president, Kevin Brinegar.

Polycom (News - Alert) customers will soon be able to deploy more devices than ever before, connect earlier to any device, standard or network and enjoy reduced costs thanks to Polycom’s latest software release, the Polycom UC Intelligent Core, TMC’s Carrie Schmelkin wrote this past week.

The unified communications leaders’ latest software offers a platform for scalable, video services supporting up to 75,000 devices; the industry's only universal bridge to support broadest range of standards, devices, networks, locations; a catalyst for viral UC usage; a guaranteed class of service with native integration and simplified administration and set-up to reduce total cost of ownership and speed return on investment.

"The UC Intelligent Core technology is the heart of unified communications and a key component of our UC Everywhere vision, and is continuing to change the industry by delivering unparalleled scalability and interoperability," said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom chief development officer. "We are accelerating the adoption of video collaboration and driving down costs by making the process easier for everyone from the end user to the IT administrator."