Unified Communications

Microsoft (News - Alert) today launches its Office Communications Server 2007 solution, widely hailed as a major development in the unified communications industry. The solution competes directly with offerings from some vendors, and complements the offerings of others. Many vendors have been working hard to ensure that their products interoperate with OCS 2007. Mitel (News - Alert) is one example.

 

An IP communications solutions company, Mitel has partnered with Microsoft for quite some time to provide the best value and performance to end-users. In particular, Mitel’s solutions focus on the power of ‘presence’—ability to locate the right person at the right time using the best mode of communication from any location.

 

To learn more about Mitel’s partnership with Microsoft, TMCnet asked Stephen Beamish, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at the company, to provide some background. Beamish shared his perspective on what “unified communications” means and where the industry is headed, as well as explaining how Mitel’s partnership with Microsoft serves needs of the end-user.

 

SB: Unified communications is the way Mitel, in combination with Microsoft, provides the end-user with a simple, single user interface choice of applications to communicate ‘in the moment.’ These choices are enabled by one simple icon--the presence icon. Through presence, in Mitel and Microsoft applications, the user can access e-mail, IM, calendar and, with Mitel Live Business Gateway (News - Alert) connected to OCS2007, connect via voice to any device anywhere in the world. The beauty of unified communications is that you never need to leave the application you are currently working in to communicate.

 

 

SB: Although always in development, unified communications has reached a level of integration never seen before. There are two key differentiators that make UC reach such an historic height:

Another historical point is that with voice as a software application, Mitel is now able to extend voice capability into the Microsoft data applications that in the past resided on a separate server.

 

SB: Mitel has a long-standing commitment to build on the Microsoft platform and is extending that with Office Communications Server 2007. Microsoft and Mitel share a long-term vision of software-powered communications. With the announced availability of Office Communications Server 2007, Mitel will feature its unified communications solutions with Microsoft to provide new and existing customers--including more than 100,000 users already addressed by the Mitel UC solution integrated with Microsoft software--a paced, easy and rewarding migration roadmap with a seamless software upgrade.

 

 

SB: Mitel has been unwavering in its commitment to providing customers with the ability to leverage Microsoft infrastructure as a platform for enhanced office collaboration. Mitel adds value to Microsoft’s core applications and collaboration suite by providing a comprehensive unified communications solution to knowledge workers, office workgroups, and beyond, while meeting the specialized communications needs of employees in vertical markets who operate away from the PC.

 

Mitel has been a partner of the Microsoft UC Ecosystem since 2004 and has progressively built and extended applications from Microsoft UC since the early days of Live Communications Server 2005 to now, the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and beyond.

 

Mitel is also a long standing preferred alliance partner of the Microsoft Technology Centers (MTC) globally (www.microsoft.com/mtc). These are key showcase areas for Microsoft to show the unified communications solutions to businesses of all types and sizes. Mitel is currently the preferred voice partner in all locations listed on the Microsoft MTC website (18 locations globally).

 

 

SB: Mitel’s flagship VoIP PBX is the Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform. Integrated as software on this platform is the Mitel Live Business Gateway 3.1 that provides integration into Microsoft’s OCS 2007 solution. It must be stated, however, that the value Mitel brings to MS OCS 2007 goes far beyond this Live Business Gateway.  Specifically, Mitel has OCS 2007 presence-enabled the following Mitel applications:

 

SB: Mitel is currently undertaking a road-show tour with Microsoft to demonstrate the integrated solutions in different countries around the world. These countries include

Canada, USA, Holland, China, France and Romania. Other locations will be announced soon.