Mitel Wins Best of Interop Award 2008

PHOENIX, Arizona, April 30, 2008 — Mitel innovation was recognized by InformationWeek, the leading multimedia business technology brand, and Interop, the leading global business technology event series, today as winner of the 2008 Best of Interop Awards in the VoIP and Collaboration category during Interop Las Vegas 2008.

The Mitel Communications Suite was selected by InformationWeek's panel of expert judges and won against products from Cisco and Siemens. Each year, Best of Interop winners prove to be the key players in the continuing evolution of business technology.

Mitel Communications Suite delivers simplified system installation and management, business process improvement, and a reduction in operating costs by consolidating low-power consumption telephony and server hardware platforms for IT and unified communications applications. Mitel Communications Suite can be combined with the Sun Ray Unified IP Client powered by Mitel, which delivers a secure unified computing and communications environment fully integrated into the world-renowned Sun Ray solution. The combined solution is among the industry’s most energy efficient, providing ongoing capex and opex savings through the elimination of power-hungry desktop PCs and the reduced energy consumption of low power Mitel IP phones.

"With the increase in exhibitors this year, competition was especially tough for the Best of Interop Awards," said Lenny Heymann, Interop general manager. "We congratulate Mitel for their contributions and demonstrating how Interop is the leading business technology event to see the exciting and latest advancements in the industry."

The Mitel Communications Suite, a pre-integrated unified communications solution, allows Mitel’s flagship 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) software and other related unified communications applications (including mobility, unified messaging, teleworking, Mitel Live Business Gateway, and audio and web conferencing) to be integrated as a single seamless communications solution for business, resident on a standard Sun Fire X4150 server. This solution delivers the features and functionality of the advanced Mitel communications solution, while reducing deployment cost, improving the seamless integration of voice applications, and enabling organizations to roll out voice-based solutions on a Sun data infrastructure.

“The work between Sun Microsystems and Mitel blends proven technologies to create a unique value proposition for businesses looking to evolve to unified communications while reducing the number of servers; obtaining secure, centralized management; and lowering their total cost of ownership,” said Paul Butcher, president and chief operating officer, Mitel. “Sun and Mitel are planning a long and successful partnership, using unified communications applications to reshape business practices and to drive business process improvements in a collaborative, mobile world.”

Unified communications: Is your network ready?

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

By David Newman, Network World Lab Alliance , Network World , 04/28/2008

Here are five questions for enterprise network managers to bear in mind when considering UC deployment:

1. What applications need to be unified communications-enabled?

Many enterprise IT organizations divide responsibility for networking and applications into two groups. Unified communications requires both application and network infrastructure support, so that means getting both groups on board before deployment. Enabling unified communications support may involve a little or a lot of work, depending on the application. For some messaging and VoIP applications, presence support may already be built-in.

Other applications – such as databases, CRM packages and especially custom-developed transaction-processing programs – may lack presence support altogether. Identifying which applications will need unified communications support, and getting the appropriate development help if needed, is a necessary first step.

2. What existing network infrastructure supports unified communications?

Passing along presence information in a unified communications-enabled network usually means supporting new protocols and/or adding infrastructure services. With location-based unified communications services, for example, DNS servers may need to be updated with SRV (service type) and LOC (location) records. Other infrastructure services, such as those for e-mail and instant messaging, may need to be extended. Presence information (for example, to move availability status between voice and instant-messaging systems) can be added via SIMPLE or XMPP.

Security is always a concern whenever adding new pathways through the network. Most unified communications systems can use centralized directory servers such as those based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or Microsoft Active Directory to authenticate users or processes seeking to communicate. And firewalls and other security devices will need to be reconfigured to support new messaging protocols – not just SIMPLE and XMPP but also any proprietary messaging protocols such as those used by AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and the like.

3. What about presence for existing PBXs?

Telephony systems have supported presence services for decades (think do-not-disturb and call-forwarding features), but that doesn't necessarily translate into unified communications support for messaging, video and other data types. It's relatively easy to add presence support to open-source platforms such as Asterisk or OpenSER. For proprietary PBXs (even those based on derivatives of the ITU's H.323 specs), more work may be needed. Check with your PBX vendor about adding support for presence protocols such as SIMPLE and/or XMPP.

4. How will you manage unified communications?

Given the huge interest in collapsing services into centralized data centers, it may make sense to add and manage unified communications from a central location as well. During trials, for example, it's far easier to locate a single Jabber server at a central data center rather than to distribute servers throughout the enterprise and then try to keep them all in sync. Centralized management also can simplify change management. Alternatively, unified communications can be totally outsourced as well; professional services groups at major PBX vendors such as Avaya and Siemens offer unified communications as a service.

5. What about unified communications support for future applications?

Because the concept of unified communications is so broad, it's quite likely additional applications and network services will eventually be needed, well after initial deployment. Experience during initial trials may be instructive: If it's difficult to integrate, say, LDAP support into one application, then adding it to 10 applications could prove far more challenging. A post-mortem after initial deployment will help you understand which of unified communications' many parts do and don't work in your organization.

Phillies Cover All Bases with Mitel IP Communications

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. and OTTAWA, Ont. – April 23, 2008 – There’s still a long way to go in the 2008 baseball season before the Philadelphia Phillies can call themselves World Series Champions, but only weeks into it they can claim to be a leader with their IP communications system thanks to Mitel.

Enjoying a 25-year relationship that began in 1983, Mitel has continued to serve the communications needs of one of baseball’s most historic teams with strategic upgrades that preserve their initial investment by reusing all the administrative digital and analog phones.

To continue filling Citizens Bank Park by making ticket purchases as easy as possible for their fans, the Phillies have now deployed the Mitel Customer Interaction Solutions, including Mitel Messaging Server, with a feature-rich Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) and the Mitel Intelligent Queue, Mitel Contact Center Management and Mitel Interactive Visual Queue with a Mitel SX-2000. They also deployed more than 700 Mitel phones throughout the organization.

The Mitel solutions route calls to the longest idle agent or a preferred agent. Intelligent Queue allows Phillies ticketing personnel to better serve callers in queue by sending them to the agents best qualified to handle their requests, while providing those fans with flexible alternatives to waiting in line.

With Interactive Visual Queue, the team is able to handle dynamic shifts in call volume (such as during a pennant race and playoffs) by supporting an immediate change in call routing and ensuring contact center resources are deployed in the most efficient manner possible.

And because all types of people love baseball, the Messaging Server boasts an automated attendant with multilingual capabilities, and unified messaging, while supporting a wide range of e-mail systems including: Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, Microsoft® Exchange 5.5, and Exchange 2000.

View the complete press release here.