The suite includes Web conferencing (powered by WebEx) integrated with a variety of network-based applications and functions, including shared contacts, calendar entries, documents, project plans, business applications and outbound alerts. All are under the control of a browser-based “dashboard” or portal that can run on PCs – via Internet Explorer (Versions 6 or 7) or Firefox 3 – or Mac’s running Firefox 3.

After the 30 day trial, the service is priced on a sliding scale from $24.99 for 5 users up to 225.95 for 50 users. Putting any price on this sort of service is always a challenge, given that industrious small businesspeople can find “free” versions of each of these features or functions. In addition the applications are definitely designed for intra-company deployments when the most visible developments in the collaboration domain extend beyond the enterprise firewalls to support inter-company communications and, perhaps more importantly business-to-customer interactions.

The announcement attracted little attention primarily because Verizon business chose to market the service as a slight repositioning of the five-year old IP Web Center. As they explain, “Unlike the original offering, which requires IP connectivity, customer contact agents using Web Center Voice can use a wired or mobile phone or Internet-connected PC to place and receive calls across the public switched telephone network or the Internet (voice over IP).”

This announcement stands in stark contrast to AT&T’s aggressive marketing of Hosted Integrated Contact Services which we describe here. In fact, the link that is embedded in the press release goes to a landing page in the Verizon Business Web site that describes a full-range of “contact center solutions” with nary a mention of Web Center Voice. Entering the term “Web Center Voice” in a search box on the page yielded an equally generic description of the IP Web Center offering.

Web Center Voice is an example of Recombinant Telephony, but it has gone slightly awry. Communities of telephone application developers our building speech front ends for Amazon EC2, Microsoft’s Azure, SalesForce.com, Voxeo and others. We had expected more sizzle from Verizon Business for what has the potential to be a very meaty steak.