Free Webinar-Independent Research Finds Total Economic Impact Of Mitel’s Virtualized Voice and UC Applications
February 6, 2012
Date: Thursday, February 9, 2012
Time: 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET
Duration: 60 minutes
Register Today
Join Mitel’s Head of Business development and Strategic Alliances, Alan Zurakowski, and Forrester Consulting’s Michelle Bishop for a free webinar this Thursday at 11:00am PT /2:00pm ET, where they will discuss the benefits you’d reap by managing your unified communications and collaboration(UCC) solutions in your virtualized data center.
Forrester conducted a study commissioned by Mitel to evaluate the total cost of ownership, Return on Investment (ROI), and overall benefits of virtualizing voice applications. For this study, Forrester examined one organization’s implementation of Mitel’s Virtual Solutions. Forrester’s analysis found:
- A three-year, risk-adjusted Return-On-Investment (ROI) of 84 percent
- A total payback period of 7.8 months
Michelle will be presenting the results of Forrester’s Total Economic Impact Study of Mitel’s Virtual Solutions. The January 2012 study provides a framework for you to evaluate the costs and benefits of deploying virtual voice and unified communications solutions in your organization. As part of the study, Forrester interviewed an enterprise with 600 employees across multiple sites, to learn about its experience implementing Mitel’s virtualized UCC solution.
In this webinar Michelle will discuss the business benefits of virtualizing voice applications, including:
- Productivity savings with Unified Communications (UC)
- Improved user experience
- Cost savings from SIP trunking
- Failover savings from software-based technology
- Hardware and disaster recovery savings from virtualization infrastructure
- IT administrative savings through faster recovery
- Improved scalability for greater business flexibility and added cost savings
- Lower risk from downtime
- Improved agility to respond to market and business changes
Alan will be providing an overview of Mitel’s Virtual Solutions and explain how together, Mitel and VMware have seamlessly united the worlds of data and voice enabling businesses to run on a single virtualized infrastructure, reaping dramatic cost and resource benefits. Alan will also introduce you to the next wave in virtualization; unified communications at the virtual desktop which will significantly reduce costs through centralized management, and provide greater flexibility for workers of all kinds.
Alan Zurakowski, Director Corporate Business Development and Strategic Alliances, Mitel
Alan Zurakowski brings more than 25 years of technology and marketing experience to his position as Director Corporate Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Mitel. In this role, Alan is responsible for the management and development of Mitel’s strategic alliances including VMware and the company’s shift to virtualizing unified communications and collaboration applications across the globe.Prior to Mitel, Alan was Principal Consultant with Nortel Global Services where he was responsible for business and implementation planning and marketing. Before joining Nortel, Alan was the co-founder and partner for Superna, a Canadian-based business consulting firm.Alan has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Carleton University and is a licensed member of the Professional Engineers Ontario.
Michelle S. Bishop, Senior Consultant, Forrester Research, Total Economic Impact (TEI) practice
Michelle S. Bishop is a senior consultant with Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) consulting practice. The TEI methodology focuses on measuring and communicating the value of IT and business decisions and solutions as well as providing an ROI business case based on the costs, benefits, risks, and flexibility of investments.
Independent Total Economic Impact Study Finds 84 Percent risk-adjusted ROI for Mitel Virtual Solutions
January 26, 2012
Forrester conducted a study commissioned by Mitel to evaluate the total cost of ownership, Return on Investment (ROI), and overall benefits of virtualizing voice applications. For this study, Forrester examined one organization’s implementation of Mitel’s Virtual Solutions. Forrester’s analysis found:
- A three-year, risk-adjusted Return-On-Investment (ROI) of 84 percent, and
- A total payback period of 7.8 months.
The January 2012 study provides a framework for you to evaluate the costs and benefits of deploying virtual voice and unified communications solutions in your organization. As part of the study, Forrester interviewed an enterprise with 600 employees across multiple sites, to learn about its experience implementing MitelVirtual Solutions.
Some of the benefits realized by the enterprise studies include:
- Productivity savings with Unified Communications (UC)
- Improved user experience
- Cost savings from SIP trunking
- Failover savings from software-based technology
- Hardware and disaster recovery savings from virtualization infrastructure
- IT administrative savings through faster recovery
- Improved scalability for greater business flexibility and added cost savings
- Lower risk from downtime
- Improved agility to respond to market and business changes
Read a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of Mitel Virtual Solutions”
Why did we choose Mitel? – SkillPath Seminars
January 12, 2012
The initial purchase of Mitel equipment at SkillPath Seminars was before my time. From its origins as a true “Mom and Pop,” SkillPath quickly experienced exponential growth and maxed out the capabilities of its existing PBX. The first Mitel was purchased primarily because of its affordability. At the same time, it allowed for rapid growth, and had all of the features of the “big name” vendors.
Since I came on-board, we have gone through multiple system upgrades. As each major upgrade (read replacement) drew near, we took a look at whether it made sense to continue down the path of the Mitel product line. We evaluated other systems and continually found them lacking in some area which was key to our business needs. In the worst example, a well-known competitor’s system actually locked up during their demo. When we left, they were still struggling to recover the system.
The single most important factor in our decision to stick with Mitel over the years is simple. With Mitel, you can be sure that call quality is king. Mitel has a proven track record for valuing the call and its quality above everything else. When you pick up a Mitel phone, it just works. This is a very different philosophy from some of their competitors, who look at voice as “just another packet” on the network.
Mitel has also given us options. The 3300 platform gives us the flexibility to manage our calls in as granular a fashion as we want in order to best meet the needs of our customers. We are able to ensure that calls are handled in the most efficient and customer-friendly manner possible. SkillPath recognizes that each call has a very real monetary value to us. We are not willing to trust that customer interaction to a less-experienced telephony vendor, and certainly not to one whose focus is not telephony. So far, our trust in Mitel has proven well-founded.
Mitel’s commitment to a quality product is complemented by its vision of the future. It is reassuring to know that the solution provider we have chosen is at the forefront of communications technology and determining how that technology can be best applied to real-life business situations.
Jason Spainhour
Jason Spainhour is the Director of Information Systems for SkillPath Seminars, headquartered in Mission, KS. SkillPath is the premier provider of business training in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He also currently serves as vice president of the Mitel User Group. In his spare time, Jason enjoys spending time outdoors and working with his children’s youth sports teams.
Setting the business agenda: The new role of the IT director
December 16, 2011
The role of IT in business has long been fundamental in facilitating operations, but recent years have witnessed an explosion in new technology and a much wider awareness of the benefits it can bring. This has put the spotlight on IT departments to deliver solutions that meet an ever-increasing range of objectives, transforming IT and communications from a business facility to an integral part of any business strategy.
Far beyond the traditional role of network management, the IT director’s remit now permeates every business department. Such an extent of change means that these are testing times for IT directors as their job roles evolve rapidly on an individual level.
To understand the key challenges that IT directors are facing at this critical time, we commissioned a study consulting UK workers and garnering insight from senior IT decision makers and analysts. Check out the infographic summarizing our findings below, or download the complete report.
We would love to get your feedback, how do you feel the report reflects your current situation?
Moving to unified communications? Here are 5 things your UC solution should have:
December 8, 2011
The benefits of unified communications (UC) are so clear that it’s not a matter of whether to
move to UC but when and how.
Combining all of your many communications capabilities – voice, presence, messaging,
conferencing, collaboration, mobility, and more – into a unified solution is key to building a
high-performance organization. It turns communications into a strategic asset that drives productivity, reduces costs, and builds competitive advantage.
But choosing the right UC solution isn’t easy. To help, here are five things a solution must have to deliver the benefits you’re after.
#1 An Open Architecture
A good UC solution leverages your existing IT infrastructure and communications technology.
To help you do more with less, a UC solution should be built on an open architecture that lets you leverage what you’ve already got.
Its standards will free you from a “walled garden” dependence on a single vendor. It will accommodate your IT strategy and your hardware, so that you make buying decisions based on cost and best fit for you. And it will be software based, so that everything from email to CRM systems can operate as a single business network.
#2 Virtualization Capabilities
A dollar spent on any technology – including UC – is wasted if it doesn’t move you toward the cloud.
OK, so maybe you haven’t yet gone virtual. But in the twenty-first century it’s just a matter of time. So to future-proof your investment you’ll need a UC solution that can move to the cloud without a forklift upgrade.
A good UC solution lets you manage voice like any other application in your data center, on the same virtualized servers. A great UC solution also puts voice on users’ virtual desktops. The better the virtualization capabilities, the more you can optimize your use of hardware and follow a cost-effective, common management, provisioning, and business continuity model across all your business applications.
#3 Mobility Support
Unified communications must provide an “in office” experience – anywhere, anytime.
The days of everyone being in an office cubicle are long gone. Teleworkers, travelers, corridor warriors, the quickly growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) crowd – all need to stay in touch.
To deliver a seamless communications experience, your UC solution must provide each of your people with a single identity, phone number, and voice mailbox, so they have the feature-rich communications experience they need at the office, on a home PC, or on the go with a smartphone or other handheld device.
#4 Flexibility
Unified communications must meet the needs of different kinds of users, and any number of users.
When it comes to communication, one size does not fit all. Reception and customer service, IT personnel, on-site support, salespeople, knowledge workers, senior executives – all have very different communications needs.
A UC solution must not only provide each of these users with exactly the capabilities they need, but must scale easily to provide the highest level of service no matter how quickly your organization grows.
#5 Manageability
A UC solution must be easy to manage.
To ensure a low cost of ownership and maximum security and reliability, your UC solution must include simple but powerful web-based management, provisioning, and Microsoft® Active Directory® integration. IT must have the full range of tools it needs to configure, manage, and control all aspects of the solution centrally, via a simple web browser.
Why am I a member of the Mitel User Group?
November 29, 2011
Welcome to “The Voice of the User Group”, a blog post series here on Mitel‘s Freedom Blog. Throughout this series we will be hearing from various members of the Mitel User Group as they discuss their membership experiences in their own words.
Our first post comes from Jason Spainhour - Director of Information Systems for SkillPath Seminars, and currently serving as vice president of the Mitel User Group.
Why am I a member of the Mitel User Group?
As vice president of the Mitel User Group, I’m often asked, “Why should a Mitel customer join the user group?” I can’t answer for everyone, but I can relate my company’s experiences as one example of what a Mitel customer can expect to get out of group membership.
I have worked for SkillPath Seminars for 14 years in various IT capacities. In that time, we have migrated from a Mitel SX200D PBX to two SX2000 systems, and presently utilize three Mitel 3300s. Over the years, we’ve found the Mitel product line to be a great fit for the way we do business.
We initially joined the user group in order to interact with other similar users, ask questions, and generally get a feel for what other Mitel customers were doing to fill the communication needs of their companies. We also saw the value of having a more direct method of communicating with Mitel R&D regarding our needs and suggestions for product development, etc.
We got our questions answered, and we in turn were able to help other members by explaining the ways in which we used various Mitel products. This interaction was very valuable to us because it helped us to maximize our investment in the products.
Once our initial questions were covered, it became obvious that group membership brought a wealth of information to us about current and upcoming product enhancements. We got to hear how other folks were actually using Mitel solutions in their environments, and we heard and saw product roadmaps from Mitel personnel which allowed us to make plans for our future utilization of that technology.
Our reseller does an excellent job of understanding our business and listening to our needs, but the reality is that he doesn’t live and breathe in our environment. He offers suggestions, of course, but he can’t possibly predict every business use we might have for any given product. There have been numerous times when we have heard about a new product from another customer or from Mitel itself during a user group meeting. This inevitably leads to a phone call to our reseller to find out more about that solution and how it might benefit us.
Another benefit we’ve taken advantage of is end-user training and the documentation available to us on Mitel OnLine. Our IT department has always tried to be as self-sufficient as possible. With respect to Mitel equipment, this means that we want to be able to perform basic administration like moves/add/changes for ourselves, and leave the larger tasks to our reseller partner.
In almost 10 years with the group, I’ve found that people tend to get from it what they put into it. By that, I mean that if they are actively participating in calls and attending meetings, then there is a lot of value to be gained by group membership. There are members I’ve developed strong friendships with over the years, and I continue to look forward to making new contacts, as well.
Jason Spainhour
Jason Spainhour is the Director of Information Systems for SkillPath Seminars, headquartered in Mission, KS. SkillPath is the premier provider of business training in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He also currently serves as vice president of the Mitel User Group. In his spare time, Jason enjoys spending time outdoors and working with his children’s youth sports teams.
Cornhusker country welcomes Mitel Freedom as the last stop of the tour
November 4, 2011
A last minute addition to the Freedom tour in Cornhusker country (Lincoln, Nebraska) yesterday marked the end of another successful Mitel roadshow. We were very happy to have the opportunity to meet and reconnect with so many great people to discuss their questions and concerns and provide them live demonstrations on such topics as Mobility solutions, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Contact Center and Mitel Virtual Solutions.
The tour by the numbers
183 days on the road
110 events
90 Cites,
30 States & Provinces
Thanks to all who participated in the Mitel Freedom Bus Tour.
Please stay tuned here or follow us on Facebook for upcoming Mitel announcements
My BYOD (bring your own device) Experience…
September 26, 2011
About two years ago, my wife started having problems with her home Windows XP PC on what seemed like a weekly basis. I would often have to spend a few hours in the evening after a long day at work trying to load updates and patches to fix the issues she was encountering. Her PC was her lifeline to the outside world as well as allowing her to administer her home-based small business.
Being the “technology” guy in the house (and I use that term loosely) everyone looked to me for tech support when, for example, their email stopped working or when my daughter was unable to IM with her friends.
With all of the problems I was experiencing, I decided it was time for a change. So, I marched down to our local electronics shop and purchased our first Mac.
This marked a new era in my world of home computing. After the initial “culture shock” of living in a new virtual world, the idea that this machine literally required no maintenance from me made me very happy. I could now spend those precious few hours a week, which I was previously spending in a troubleshooting rage, relaxing on the couch playing with my other gadgets.
Before long we added two more Apple gadgets to our family. When my daughter graduated from high school we purchased for her a MacBook and she quickly followed this up by trading in her old smartphone for an iPhone.
So, my household was now stable, but not for long. While working on various projects at Mitel, I was introduced to Android!
Android was a brave new world for me, but I jumped in with both feet to finally see what all the hype was about. My first device was an HTC Android smartphone. It was a very slick device and I can really see the appeal it has with customers. It’s a much less expensive, yet equally functional device to an iPhone. The Android Market was full of great applications and I even found a running application that I have been using while training for a half marathon.
The Android phone was quickly followed up with the acquisition of a Motorola Xoom tablet (Android). This was really a life changing event because for the first time I realized the power of the tablet and how it was going to change the technology landscape that we live in. It was portable, powerful, and again ran all of the useful applications that we needed to run a productive and interesting high tech household.
Everything seemed perfect except for one small problem. None of these new devices really had any integration to my work environment. They were fun and useful, but couldn’t really support me at work. This, so far, had been reserved for my corporate-issued BlackBerry that lets me read my email anywhere and stay up-to-date with my meetings and corporate contacts.
For many companies today, this is an ongoing problem. People are in love with their devices and don’t want to be forced into any one technology over another. Many companies are adopting a BYOD (bring your own device) policy for employees. This is a great concept if you can get all of these devices to provide enterprise class applications to each individual. This can turn into an IT nightmare with trying to support multiple applications on multiple devices running multiple operating systems.
Luckily for me, I am a heavy Mitel Unified Communications Solutions user. This means that I can get rich UC integration on any of the devices that I have discussed to this point.
For example, I have a Mitel Teleworker Solution phone in my home office and through the power of hot desking and the Mitel UC Advanced Web Portal, I can use my wife’s Mac to manage all of my UC requirements. I can see my call history, listen to voice mails, and actually make calls through the OfficeLink feature to corporate contacts while getting their presence information.
On my Android smartphone, I use the UC Advanced Mobile for Android application that I downloaded for free from the Android Market. With this application I can manage my UC features from anywhere in the world over a GSM or Wi-Fi network. My favorite feature of UC Advanced Mobile for Android is the “widget” feature that allows me to create snapshot shortcuts on the main page of my call history and voice messages.
The same goes for my BlackBerry which I can use to make OfficeLink calls while I am on the road to save on long distance charges. I can search for a contact either in BlackBerry contacts or my native UC Advanced contacts and then have the PBX call me and the other party, so I am only ever receiving calls and not placing them. This is very cost effective for people who travel frequently. The other feature I really like on the UC Advanced Mobile is the Dynamic Status updates based on GPS locations, Wi-Fi locations, or Bluetooth connections. This allows me to instantly update people who need to locate me as to where I am and how best to reach me at any given moment. I can also have UC Advanced integrate with my calendar to change my status automatically to, for example, “In a meeting,” and have all of my calls forwarded to voice mail for the duration of that meeting.
I think we are on to something with these integrations. Our customers can now choose their devices according to personal preference and we will provide them with the tools they need to conduct business their way.
Whether you are a BlackBerry lover, Android convert, or a loyal Apple user, Mitel has a full and growing UC value proposition. The applications are easily accessible from their respective “stores” and configuration takes less than 20 seconds.
Even if at the end of the day all you want is Web access to your unified communications capabilities, we have that covered too. More and more, IT managers are looking for Web based UC applications because they find them extremely easy to mange and deploy. Users need only be given a URL, username, and password and they are off to the UC races.
So, when it comes to gadgets, I have seen (and used) them all. In fact, I just picked up my new iPad that arrived this morning and from what I am hearing about UC Advanced Mobile for iPad, I may never need another device again. Stay tuned…
Moving Real-Time Voice into the Virtualized Data Center
August 31, 2011
Mitel has seen early success over the past year deploying real-time voice (call control) and associated Unified Communications and Collaboration applications with customers using VMware. Our customers are able to deploy the Mitel Unified Communications and Collaboration software, including real-time call control into their virtualized Data Centers the same way they are deploying the rest of their business applications.
Speaking to a number of CIOs and Directors of IT, they are quite comfortable running their critical business applications in VMware. There are three key benefits sited by our customers that have virtualized their voice applications and they are a common applications deployment practice, a consistent management methodology and a single business continuity and disaster recovery plan. All three contribute better skill set utilization of existing staff, lowering costs and improved business agility.
First, let’s talk about how important it is to have a common application deployment practice. Many businesses have invested lots of time, money and resource into reducing the hardware footprints in their data centers and building business processes surrounding application deployment. In addition to the savings gained in fewer servers deployed, these investments also yield big returns in the form of reduced power and cooling requirements in the data centers or server rooms. It also greatly improves the speed that IT is able to test and deploy applications. Mitel applications come packaged in standard OVF, (Open Virtualization Format). We provide engineering guidelines for CPU, Memory and space requirements. By delivering our applications in this manner companies can capitalize on the above mentioned practices and build on the savings because Mitel does not require them to do anything differently for our voice applications, (i.e., no special hardware required, no time consuming P2V or physical to virtual conversion and no additional training required for server administrators).
Once applications are deployed, they need to be managed. VMware provides a rich set of management tool as part of vSphere. Mitel supports the complete set of tools in vSphere. I would like to highlight a few of those tools most commonly used by our customers: vMotion, DPM (Distributed Power Management) and Virtual Appliance Deployment. vMotion allows you to move a running VM, virtual machine, from one host to another. This is very useful if you need to perform routine maintenance on a host machine. You can move the virtual machines to another host, perform the maintenance, then move the VM back without disrupting service. DPM (Distributed Power Management) provides additional power savings by dynamically consolidating workloads during periods of low resource utilization. Virtual machines are migrated onto fewer hosts and the unused hosts are powered off. Virtual Appliance Deployment allows you to take a packed vAPP and import it into your virtual server fabric greatly reducing installation time.
A business’s lifeblood depend on systems availability, especially your communications systems. Businesses invest significantly in planning and building business continuity and disaster recovery plans. I sincerely doubt a CIO or an IT director is going to be thrilled by having to do this twice or worse differently because an application requires specific hardware and has a separate management platform to deal with, not to mention the added costs and process that will have to be added. As I talked about above, Mitel leverages the vSphere suite of management tools provided by VMware. (HA) VMware High Availability and (SRM) VMware Site Recovery Manager are part of that suite of tools companies can leverage for Business Continuity and Disaster recovery.
vSphere (HA) High Availability provides automatic failover protection against hardware and operating system failures within your virtualized IT environment by monitoring virtual machines to detect operating system and hardware failures. If a failure is detected (HA) restarts virtual machines on other physical servers in the resource pool without the need for manual intervention. It also protects applications from operating system failures by automatically restarting virtual machines when an operating system failure is detected. (SRM) VMware Site Recovery Manager allows you to restart your virtual machines at a backup site providing geographic redundancy for your mission critical business applications and deliver on service levels, (i.e., RTO and RPO (Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives)).
In summary, Mitel delivers world class Unified Communications and Collaborations systems and they can be deployed today in your virtualized data center. But it is more than just being “virtualized”. It is about delivering these high value applications leveraging a consistent, cost effective and highly available methodology.
Stephen Brown
Vice President of U.S Systems Engineering
Mitel
Stephen is responsible for the consultative design and engineering support for Mitel’s product and applications portfolio to our extensive network of business partners and U.S. based sales force. Stephen is responsible for a team of over 60 professional men and women.
Prior to joining Mitel in 1996, Stephen worked in the integrator space designing and installing many comprehensive voice and data networks. At Mitel, Stephen served in many roles ranging from technical support, systems/sales engineering, business development, and strategic alliance management. He has consistently contributed to optimizing performance levels, driving business growth, facilitating key alliances, and defining and implementing strategic technology-driven solutions.
Stephen began his career in communications in 1990 after a three-year commitment to the U.S. Army. He served with the 37th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Airborne); achieving the rank of (E-5, Sergeant, Non-Commissioned Officer).
Mitel Freedom Tour Comes to Boston!
August 12, 2011
Mitel Freedom Tour Comes to Boston!
There is a lot happening in Boston these days.
Metropolitan Telephone Inc. hosted the Mitel Freedom Tour Bus at their headquarters in Walpole Ma.
Not only has the Stanley Cup returned to Boston but Mitel Inc. has returned with a bus load of applications that is a rolling technology showcase of seven demo stations.
Our invitees had an opportunity to discuss their specific requirements with the experienced an knowledgeable staff members from Metropolitan Telephone Inc. and Mitel Inc.
Discussion topics include: Voip, Mobility and Collaboration, Virtualization, Disaster Recovery, Contact Center , Unified Communication and Virtual Desktop Solutions.
What’s even more fun is that they immediately had the opportunity to get a hands on experience with many of the recommendations and applications via the live demonstrations available on the bus and within Metropolitan Telephone.
How Fun is that? It’s Simply Communicating at its best.
tricci@mettel.com
www.mettel.com