Laszlo Systems this week unveiled an enhanced version of Laszlo Webtop, which the company refers to as "The Web 2.0 Desktop." The company also is partnering to add VOIP capabilities to the platform.

Version 1.2 of Lazlo Webtop enables delivery of Web 2.0-based, RIAs (rich Internet applications) for popular browsers and devices, the company said.

"This is a tool that allows you to assemble your own Web desktop for delivery to your customers or your employees that may or may not use prebuilt applications from Laszlo," said David Temkin, chief technology officer and founder of Laszlo, at the AJAXWorld conference in Santa Clara, California.

Featured is the machinery around a windowing system application integration, single sign-on, and capabilities to offer a visually integrated experience with data integration on the back end, Temkin said.

An alliance with CounterPath Solutions brings voice-based communications to Webtop as an optional capability.

"This allows you to make VoIP-based calls from your Laszlo Webtop interface," Temkin said. Users can add CounterPath's CMC (CounterPath Multimedia Communicator) WebPhone software to Webtop, integrating it with Laszlo's Mail and Contacts applications. WebPhone will be available later this year.

The 1.2 version features Laszlo Mail as an optional application module for desktop e-mail and carrier-grade scalability, the company said. Also added were APIs for application integration, in which data access and paging APIs have been added to bolster integration and performance when deploying OpenLaszlo applications with large datasets. OpenLaszlo is the company's RIA development platform.

User-based interactive advertising options is being offered as feature primarily for service providers.

Laszlo is offering bundled solutions based on Laszlo Webtop for enterprise, developers, and service providers. The three specific bundles include:

* Laszlo Webtop for Service Providers, featuring an extensible offering for delivering a customized communications Web portal. Advertising can be integrated. Providers also can add modules such as news, stocks, and productivity applications. * Laszlo Webtop for Enterprises, to improve the way users access content, complete transactions, and consume multimedia. * Laszlo Webtop SDK for Developers, featuring a software development kit to build Webtop solutions and leverage OpenLaszlo 4.

Access to an evaluation copy of Lazlo Webtop 1.2 is available for free for 30 days. Pricing for Webtop deployments starts at US$27,000 plus a per-user fee. The SDK starts at US$795 per year.