TMCnet Unified Communications Week in Review

This week TMC (News - Alert) had the news  that Mitel (News - Alert), a provider of unified communications software, stated that the City of Charles Sturt successfully implemented a Mitel unified communications (UC) tool across their entire organization.

With Mitel’s UC offering, the Council improved the flexibility and productivity of customer service delivery across key areas of the organization.

The City of Charles Sturt is the local government region situated to the west of the Central Business District of Adelaide, South Australia. The Council services a population of approximately 105,000 residents, providing services such as road maintenance, waste collection, recycling, property planning, and heritage protection.

Also this week TMC’s Juliana Kenny wrote that Frost & Sullivan, an analysis firm which recently surveyed the hosted unified communications (UC) and IP telephony market, acknowledged Cypress Communications (News - Alert) for its C4 IP service offering and offered the company its 2011 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Differentiation Excellence of the Year.

Cypress’ C4 IP service is a valuable option for businesses that require cost-effective, flexible tools as it provides a comprehensive set of VoIP and UC capabilities. Frost & Sullivan Program Director Elka Popova stated, “Although hosted service providers have sought to deliver greater customer value through bundles of communications and collaboration applications, few have been able to differentiate through end-to-end UC service packages offering unique features and capabilities to end-users.”

Cypress’ product combines the benefits of the software-as-a-service model with mobility and collaboration tools as well as VoIP technologies. Popova continued, “With its highly differentiated hosted UC, providing the combined benefits of the software-as-a-service model and advanced functionality such as VoIP, presence, mobility and collaboration capabilities, Cypress Communications delivers unique value to businesses looking to gain a competitive advantage.”

This week also saw TMC’s Nathesh report  that Ingram Micro, a global broad-based IT distributor, introduced cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) offerings from Siemens Enterprise (News - Alert) Communications designed for SMB-focused channel partners.

Siemens Enterprise Communications explained that its UCC tools help users meet their challenges in this demanding economic climate. By combining all the communications into a single, manageable interface, unified communications simplifies the way one shares information and improves collaboration both within their organization and with customers, partners and suppliers.

Ingram Micro stated that the UCC solutions will be available 3Q 2011 and are part of the company’s rapid expansion of its cloud services portfolio.

The UCC offerings from Siemens are also capable of integrating with other applications and communications platforms. This open communications approach not only simplifies initial implementation and deployment, it also safeguards financial investment by enabling further expansion and integration to all future capabilities.

And finally, this week saw TMC’s Calvin Azuri note  that Unilava (News - Alert) Corporation, a provider of diverse communication products and services to both business and residential customers, announced that it will collaborate with Hexa2 to advance product integrations for unified communications targeting business customers.

Baldwin Yung, President & CEO of Unilava Corporation, said "We are pleased to collaborate with Hexa2 to work towards ideas on how we can further enable our business customers with advanced technology, improve business output and reduce travel, telecom and IT operating costs. Unilava is streamlining communications across messaging, VoIP, video and voice with connected applications and devices. We hope to provide the flexibility to our customers need to manage their communications infrastructure efficiently."