MITEL ADVERTORIAL Andy Elliot
Find Freedom with Mitel
The launch of Mitel Freedom Architecture signals a new era in comms based on flexibility, simplicity, cost cutting and rationalisation of the infrastructure. And according to Andy Elliot, EMEA Marketing Director Mitel, the launch also introduces a total redefinition of the watchwords ‘freedom to communicate’ that liberates new opportunities for comms resellers.
T
he successful reseller of the future will, either directly or via partnering,
need to manage the emerging IT strategies of today. They will have to offer complete freedom of choice for customers with no compromise and a level of investment protection covering traditional customer premise applications as well as emerging private and public cloud unified communication services. According to Elliot, the word ‘freedom’ in business communications means different things to different people, but the very essence of freedom is being in control of your own destiny. “Mitel Freedom delivers that for customers by empowering them to adopt a best of breed IT strategy that maximises the operational benefits of unified communications, while avoiding the pitfalls and inflexibility of single vendor lock-in,” said Elliot.
He says this is a very different approach to several of Mitel’s major competitors whose raison d’etre is to own the customer’s entire infrastructure and application deployment. “Mitel Freedom leaves the customer in control and provides them with
far more flexibility to deal with future communications requirements,” Elliot noted. “It does so via a flexible, open, software centric approach to deploying unified communications as an integral part of their wider IT strategy, underpinned by Mitel Communications Director (MCD), a single unified communications software stream that can operate on customers’ premises (IP-PBX), in their private cloud (for example, a virtualised environment or datacentre), or in the public cloud via a hosted/ managed service provider.”
Flexibility is key Mitel’s flexible approach also offers freedom in terms of the commercial model, with organisations able to choose capex or opex models based on their own specific financial preferences. And, of course, Mitel provides freedom for individual users, giving them an in-office experience anywhere on any device. In essence, Mitel Freedom optimises choice both at an IT strategy level and for the individual user.
“Resellers should be attracted to Mitel Freedom because today’s market is rich with new technologies and ever-increasing options
32 COMMS DEALER JUNE 2011
for the customer,” added Elliot. “UC, for example, can be deployed via CPE, in a datacentre, in a virtual environment or as a hosted/ managed service. That’s great in terms of providing resellers with opportunities to drive new revenue streams but with multiple options can come complexity.”
From a reseller perspective, more options typically means more certification requirements, taking key sales and engineering resources out of action for a period of time. With Mitel Freedom this is minimised as the same core software stream (MCD) applies irrespective of the deployment method, supporting a common range of IP phones and applications.
“For customers, more options can lead to confusion as to which option to deploy, leading to them either putting off a buying decision to avoid making the ‘wrong’ decision or simply lengthening the sales cycle,” added Elliot. “With Mitel Freedom, no answer is the wrong one. Whatever the deployment method, the customer gets the same suite of UC benefits, IP phones and applications. What’s more, their investment is assured should they choose
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at some point in the future to evolve their IT deployment strategy, for example from an IP-PBX to a virtualised datacentre. Mitel Freedom takes the complexity out of the buying decision, helps protect the customer’s investment and helps resellers close the deal!”
Cloud computing and virtualisation are the latest technologies that resellers need to add to their mix, as both are very hot IT spending trends, observes Elliot. “To support private cloud deployments, resellers should be able to offer and support not just the traditional customer premises equipment, but also deployment methods such as virtualisation,” he said. “This in turn can lead to other application oriented revenue streams and help build vertical sector specialist credibility. Through its partnership with VMware, Mitel encourages the reseller community to get engaged with the VMware partner program specifically, to ensure that they can fully
leverage these emerging revenue opportunities.”
For public cloud deployments, resellers can invest in developing a managed service offering themselves by building a secure and reliable data centre to host voice services and applications. “Resellers can then wrap other network and mobile offerings into this to provide a cohesive UC managed service to customers opening up new and regular revenue opportunities,” Elliot said. “Alternatively, a quicker and more cost-effective route to market is to re-sell a ‘unified communications managed service’ provided via a service provider who already has that infrastructure in place. Either method allows the reseller to deliver freedom of choice to their customers and, through a managed service approach, build long term customer relationships and an ongoing revenue stream.”
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