Cost saving solution for SMEs

One of Mitel’s most recent products to be put on the telephone systems market is their AnyWare Cloud Contact Centre, aimed at small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This new addition to Mitel’s extensive range of Cloud-based solutions enables SMEs to improve their long-term financial planning with reliable operating costs, as well as a reduction in capital expenditure. Furthermore, this solution is ideal for the smaller business, which may not have an excess of IT resources, as Mitel is able to manage the Contact Centre on behalf of the client.

Armstrong, as one of Mitel’s leading resellers, is on hand to assist with any support or questions you or your business may have with regards to the AnyWare software. We have years of experience in providing and supporting Mitel’s products and always keep our training up to date and in line with Mitel’s product development.

Creating a mobile desktop

The AnyWare Cloud Contact Centre is based on Mitel’s Freedom UC architecture, meaning that the software is delivered via a cloud-based software stream. This new addition to Mitel’s portfolio allows agents to work from a number of locations, whilst simultaneously able to access all of the usual, necessary information they would have access to in the same office, such as the reporting tools required to ensure customers are responded to efficiently and effectively. The UC solution is reliable and secure, alleviating any worries from decision-makers minds with regards to data.

Enabling SMEs to provide unrivalled customer service experiences

Jon Brinton, president of Mitel NetSolutions, explains that it was a natural progression to formulate this product, to enable the smaller business to catch up with larger organisations in order to emulate the customer experience so often exclusively available to larger businesses. “The rich feature set available with the Mitel AnyWare cloud solution can provide small and mid-sized businesses a streamlined process to manage their contact center cost effectively and with the superior performance and integration previously only available to large organizations with large budgets,” says Brinton.

If you would like more information to find out whether Mitel’s AnyWare Cloud Contact Centre is right for your business, drop us an e-mail at sales@acplc.com and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

The analyst’s study found many organisations still struggle with the challenges presented by UCC due to its varied technologies. However, the report said new ways of working have encouraged 78% of decision makers to make a significant investment in this area.

The report added that there was a clear focus on rolling UCC out to mobile devices, with more than a fifth (22%) looking to deploy these solutions within a year.

“There’s nothing new about unified communications and collaboration, yet many organisations are still challenged by different UCC technologies, even a decade after the first IP-based PBX,” said the report, commissioned by IT firm Dimension Data.

“Recent developments have caused IT decision-makers to formulate – often for the first time – comprehensive UCC strategies, and to invest in them substantially. Smartphones, the bring your own device (BYOD) trend and strained budgets are compelling IT to act.

“Meanwhile, advances in enterprise video technologies and services, and the adoption of social media for business use provide more collaboration options for employees… and more headaches for IT.”

The report added that 42% of organisations will consume UCC as an on-premise managed service.

Despite the current roll out of 4G networks, which can handle cellular traffic much faster than previous generations, Juniper claims the majority of traffic will travel via Wi-Fi networks.

The report identified a series of trends that are coming together to greatly accelerate Wi-Fi adoption – mainly NGH (Next Generation Hotspot) and Hotspot 2.0 specifications along with 5GHz enabled devices. Although it added that mobile operators will also roll out small cells within their networks to help handle loads.

The report claimed mobile network operators are beginning to build out networks based on public access small cells and this will have a big effect on the offload ecosystem.

“The trend will continue and operators will make use of more integrated units of Wi-Fi and small cells. In the case of indoor cells, where most usage happens, you effectively have Wi-Fi as the pioneer and are in many ways the leader in this area,” said report author Nitin Bhas.

The analyst said, by 2017, the amount of data traffic generated by smartphones and tablets will exceed 90,000 petabytes – the equivalent of 7 billion Blu-ray movies.

Google Apps are easy to use, and are a great tool in the increasingly mobile workplace. Whether logged in at a desktop computer in the office, on your smartphone on the train, or using an iPad at home, individuals and business users are able to access the same documents, whatever their device, wherever they are. With the use of the Cloud growing, we’re likely to see a growth in such services.

One of our partners, Avaya, has been working closely on integrating Cloud-based software such as Google Apps with their unified communications packages to ensure all of our clients have the best and most flexible experience possible.

Avaya have also been developing technology to work with their Contact Centre platform using WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication). Avaya works to integrate WebRTC with browsers such as Google Chrome to enable individual users to initiate contacts with other agents via the Contact Centre, simply by clicking on a Web page button. This built-in browser and app communication will reduce expenditure on voice calls and audio and video conferencing

WebRTC is currently unavailable on Apple and Windows browsers, and so Google are certainly leading the way through its Chrome development, thus encouraging its use in Avaya software, as they ensure they’re keeping ahead of the game.

If your business wants to improve its unified communications strategy by staying ahead of the competition, get in touch with Armstrong Communications today. As certified resellers of Avaya products, we can help you to ensure your UC solutions are effectively and efficiently integrated, with the latest technological developments. Ring us to find out how we can improve your integrated communications today on 0845 345 0045.

The ShoreTel SBE 100 has been designed with the small business in mind, ensuring that basic tasks – such as changing users or moving phones – can easily be performed by employees who do not have specialist IT skills, a recognition that small businesses may not have dedicated IT staff in-house. All of the applications within the integrated hardware and software package have been proven to improve employee productivity, and thus lower the total cost of ownership.

Another fantastic feature of the ShoreTel SBE 100 is its scalability; important for the small business eager to grow, it can easily be transformed to fit the needs of a larger business with thousands of users with a simple software upgrade – no hardware alterations needed. The package has already been praised for its functionality in large businesses, delivered at a price that is affordable to smaller businesses.

It’s easy to see why this integrated package has been developed by ShoreTel. SMEs are rapidly growing, and in the UK last year, SMEs accounted for a huge 99.9% of all private sector businesses. SMEs are also great for the economy, helping to provide 14.1m jobs and give back through its combined £1.5bn turnover in 2012.

If you’re a small business and would like to find out more about ShoreTel’s SBE 100, get in touch with Armstrong Communications today.

Global ICT solutions and services provider, Dimension Data has commissioned a global study into the use of UCC, carried out by research firm Ovum. The research surveyed 1320 IT decision makers and 1390 technology users in 18 countries across Europe, Australia, Asia, the U.S.A, and South Africa, and found that IT decision makers plan to spend at least $50.8 million on UCC services over the next two years.
The report found that more than 78% of IT decision makers polled have a current strategic plan and budget for selected components of UCC, with 43% cited with a plan and budget for most components, and 42% all or most. These findings represent the huge increase in the importance of UCC for businesses today, and draws attention to the fact that decision makers now recognise that businesses must factor in planning and budget for UCC in order to operate efficiently and effectively.

Return on Investment

Importantly, 61% of IT decision makers who had made large investments in UCC found measurable cost savings, employee productivity and employee uptake. Listening to these compelling statistics, it’s evident that UCC makes huge positive changes in businesses in the UK today

Improve Employee Profiling

Interestingly, one area of the report suggested that businesses are in need of more efficiently profiling employees in order to ascertain the needs of tailored UCC packages. Surprisingly, 21% of employers believed that all employees have the same needs with regards to UCC solutions. As part of our consultancy service, we will work with you to determine the requirements of your staff teams to ensure your UCC package is rolled out thoroughly and effectively.

The study also found that 70% of IT decision makers consider a managed delivery option, another area we are highly successful in.

We excel at ensuring everything UCC related is managed smoothly within your organisation, saving you time to focus on your business development.

For more information on our services, and how we can ensure your team are comfortable with unified communication tools, get in touch now on 0845 345 0045  or request a call back

In terms of how we can relate to these terms, unified communications can be thought of the tools that make the collaborations happen, and the collaborations are therefore the result of the tools being used effectively. Whilst the new UC&C term has been coined, unified communications should inherently imply collaborations if the UC tools are used in the right way.

Old-fashioned unified communications may have been about telephoning a convenient colleague, who you knew would answer your call quickly and who may be able to assist in finding the solution needed. Today’s modern unified communications is about accessing the best person for the job, the person who not only has the right solution but the best solution, not just the person who is most convenient. This is where the collaborative aspect comes in.

Unified communication tools are our speciality – we provide a range of clients with the right products for their business – and the collaboration aspect is a more abstract concept which we will help you to integrate with your tools. Through working with our highly-skilled team, collaboration will become an easy-to-use term which will be built in to your unified communications system through our excellent training and knowledge. Whenever we’re working with a new client, we make sure to provide you with all of the tools and know-how to make sure that collaboration tool is embedded within the unified communications culture in your workplace.

Blog post written by Solar Communications

Rumours making the rounds in digital communities suggest that Google will move towards a unified communications solution through launching a single service, currently believed to be called ‘Babbel’ or ‘Babel’. The advantages of such a service would create an organised and clearer user interface, facilitating interaction across the whole platform of Google’s applications by supporting and improving file and image sharing, and enhancing the transmission of notifications across devices.

Babbel, reported as being built from scratch so as to avoid problems encountered with other messaging applications, such as iMessage and Blackberry Messenger, signals Google’s developing intent to overtake its competitors in the social networking field. Perhaps one of Google’s challenges in this sector is in its branding, and Babbel can be seen as an opportunity to rebrand all of its existing products into one unified solution.

Google was under fire by the Free Software Foundation last month after it began blocking incoming subscription requests from non-Google domains. The majority of Google’s chat services have been operating over an open chat platform known as Jabber, which allows individuals to communicate regardless of their hosting domain. Google’s move to block outsiders came as a solution to handling a spam problem; even so, they have continued to be widely criticised amongst certain digital communities.

Such moves highlights Google’s intent to move towards unified communications, not least to ensure it has full control over its services and to prevent such problems from occurring. For the intended audience of its new Babble product, this signifies Google’s commitment to streamlining its services and ensuring they are well-protected though perhaps at the expense of the user’s autonomy.

Blog post written by Solar Communications

The analyst claims video continues to be placed high on the list of priorities by many organisations which see it as a key component of collaboration.

IDC claims difficult macro-economic conditions damaged overall demand in the global video conferencing and telepresence market last year – despite some areas, such as room-based (4.1%) and personal (5%) video conferencing, enjoying growth. However, the IDC report highlighted a 14.9% growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 as evidence appetite for these tools remains strong.

“Despite the overall weak 2012 performance in the worldwide enterprise videoconferencing market, we still see adoption being driven by interest in doing video integrations with vendor UCC portfolios and business processes, as well as the increasing use of video among small workgroup, desktop, and mobile users,” said Petr Jirovsky, senior research analyst at IDC.

The Office of National Statistics has, meanwhile, claimed that using the internet for both video and voice calls is growing in popularity in the UK. One third of UK adults were found to have made calls over the internet in 2012, double the number in 2009 (16%) and four times higher than 2007 (8%).