It’s time to take a look back at this week’s Communications as a Service (CaaS) news.

NetSocket,  a real-time IP service assurance and provider assurance solutions developer, announced that its Service Visibility Solution Suite (SVSS) had been declared complaint with Avaya’s (News - Alert) Aura Communication Manager 6.0.1 and Aura Session Manager 6.1.5.0. NetSocket also revealed that it had received the Avaya DevConnect Compliant Award.  The interoperability of NetSocket and Avaya solutions will benefit companies providing hosted and cloud-based VoIP/UCaaS, video, and collaboration services.

When Don Brown, the founder and CEO of Interactive Intelligence, saw companies start moving their technology to the cloud, he had Interactive Intelligence redevelop and re-launch its hosted services in early 2009 to take advantage. Now Brown’s vision is being backed-up with hard business data, Interactive’s chief marketing officer, Joe Staples (News - Alert), told Cloud Computing. For example, in 2009, the cloud made up 5 percent of Interactive’s total orders; a year later, the cloud comprised 10 percent, and at press time, cloud services made up 24 percent, nearly a quarter of its business, in the first nine months of 2011.

Arkadin (News - Alert), a global provider of collaboration-as-a-service solutions, announced the launch of Radisys media servers across its new Cloud Collaboration Platform, delivering global conferencing services over a private global-IP network. Leveraging CMS-9000 media servers, Arkadin’s Cloud Collaboration Platform supports intelligent call routing, increased level of security and offers customers a single set of country access numbers. The collaboration between Arkadin and Radisys will see the deployment of CMS-9000 across six cities spanning four continents, connected via the Arkadin private IP network.

Socium Ltd., based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, was tapped to provide SaaS (News - Alert) for the UK’s G-Cloud program. Socium’s online validation service was chosen as an approved service on the G-Cloud framework, a cross government initiative. The £60 (US $94.8) million G-Cloud Framework includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), SaaS and Specialist Cloud Services to cover all aspects cloud computing. Socium said that as a successful applicant, the company will be able to include details of its cloud based Online Validation Service in the CloudStore, which will be a catalog of suppliers and services on the G-Cloud Framework.

Radisys and Arkadin teamed to launch a new kind of Cloud Collaboration Platform. Arkadin’s Cloud Collaboration Platform has been integrated with Radisys CMS-9000 media servers. With this addition to their Cloud Collaboration Platform, Arkadin provides international conference video and audio calling that has strong audio and video, better call routing and greater security. Radysis media servers deliver clear VoIP connections that allow for audio mixing, helping Arkadin offer customers a different kind of conferencing that will set them apart from their competitors.

Finally, can software offer social service? David Sims cites Tinniam V. Ganesh, of IBM (News - Alert) India, who observes the incredible value to be found in correctly deploying wikis, podcasts, communities, with the whole emphasis being to foster collaboration, fuse and diffuse ideas and spark creative cooperation. Ganesh refers to Professor Clay Shirky of New York University, who recycles the old idea of “institutional knowledge” residing in the skulls of employees but untapped by the organization, as “cognitive surplus,” contending that maybe it’s the new generation of social software tools that can unlock a good bit of that for the company’s benefit.

The bottom line for Ganesh is that letting every employee know what every other employee working on related projects is thinking and doing, and being able to cross-pollinate, or at least benefit from each other’s work. Still, Sims argues if Web 2.0 is going to flourish, organizations will have to reconfigure their incentive and compensation approaches.

For more CaaS news, be sure to visit TMCnet again next week for all the latest developments.