Kuala Lumpur, Dec 4: InterCall, the world largest conferencing and collaboration services provider launched a slew of new services under the InterCall brand in Malaysia at the Aquaria KLCC aquarium today.

Its operations in Malaysia had hitherto been centred around Genesys Conferencing's conference call services. Headquartered in France, Genesys has been in operational in Malaysia since 2002.

InterCall completed its acquisition of the Genesys group in May 2008 and this announcement marks InterCall's formal entry into Malaysia and the furtherance of the consolidation the merger of Genesys. However, it will retain the Genesys brand name in Malaysia, since it's well established amongst customers here.

“We wil deliver and expanded suite of products, better access to Asian resources (ie. human resources) for account management and customer support, leading edge technology and global reach,” said Hain MacKay-Cruise, InterCall managing director – Asia Pacific.

These new services include Reservationless-Plus, Automated Operator Assisted, Intercall Unified Meeting, InterCall Call Streaming Services, InterCall Video Conferencing, InterCall Online and InterCall Web Services.

Such conference calls typically involve participants calling a local number, often toll-free, then log in with a conference code & their PIN number, then talk with multiple other parties online. Quite often, these also include the sharing of information through presentation slides and collaboration on documents, spreadsheets and so on online.

Members of the media, such as this writer, have participated in such conferences from their desks and PCs.

InterCall added an audio bridge which provides a link to a web platform which lets users control the proceedings, such as to mute people and share data.

Genesys' customers in Malaysia include a major bank which found that it made its much easier for its branch managers to communicate and collaborate on work with each other without leaving their office.

There's also a big push amongst multinationals to have telepresence and a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company in Malaysia is investing in a telepresence solution.

Genesys' office in Wisma Selangor Dredging also has a video conferencing room with a multi-point video screen for rent.

“Besides large corporations for which we provide customised services, we're also looking at providing packaged services for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs),” said MacKay-Cruise.

InterCall's story began in the early 1990s when the capabilities of LAN line phones were limited, so it began roviding conferencing platforms which connected three or more people to a single call, at a time when the work-from-home movement and the wireless boom had increased the number of remote workers.

The dot-com era increased awareness in its usage and Intercall introduced the first reservationless audio conferencing service in 1999 and web-conferencing in 2000.

Following the 11th September, 2001 (9/11) incidents in New York and Washington DC, businesses turned to teleconferencing as an alternative to air-travel and realised that they could be productive without having to travel and despite the subsequent recovery of air travel, the conferencing industry continued to grow and is now worth US$4.9 billion worldwide, up 66% from 2002.

Well increased oil prices, hence cost of air travel also helped and according to Wainhouse Research, the total number of conference minutes grew from around 6,500 minutes in the second quarter of 2005 to over 14,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008.

“The market in Malaysia for collaboration is worth around US$4 million,”said MacKay-Cruise.

For further information visit www.intercall.com or www.genesys.com.