Monday, September 26, 2016

62 Local Chapters and 27,000 Make-A-Wish Volunteers Rely on Mitel to Make Wishes Come True

Mitel and VMware


Voice and data applications can now be implemented and managed on the same virtualized servers.
What used to be two separate endeavors – requiring distinct infrastructure and different skill sets – is now one unified strategy. Simplifying deployment, maintenance, upgrades, scalability, usability... everything.
“It was a big deal for us, the Mitel and VMware partnership...Their solution is stable, tested...and actually works.” --Amit Mantri, Director of Network Operations, Intrasphere Technologies, Inc.

The promise of “simply communicating” starts with a simple premise: Voice is just another app.

Mitel’s strategic partnership with VMware is the catalyst for transformation.
Together, Mitel and VMware cracked the code on how to add real-time voice applications to virtualized servers without experiencing latency issues that affect call quality.

Virtual Desktop Solutions

Our relationship with VMware continues to transform unified communications. For example, Mitel introduced a series of Virtual Desktop UCC solutions, which essentially integrates the office phone into the portable desktop.

Integrated Business Collaboration Applications

Mitel and VMware Zimbra have recently announced the integration of click-to-call, visual voicemail, and call logs with the Zimbra 8 web client.
More than 2,000 Mitel clients of all sizes have already deployed virtualized voice and are reaping the tremendous value of the Mitel–VMware partnership. This is where the industry is heading. See you in the data center.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Frost & Sullivan - Hosted IP Award



Mitel stands out among hosted IP telephony and UCaaS solution providers with its diversified platforms and services portfolio.  A visionary strategy, effective execution, differentiated capabilities, excellent customer purchase and ownership experiences, and a strong brand have enabled the company to grow at above-average industry growth rates and rapidly capture market share among both platform vendors and service providers.
Over the past few years, Mitel has excelled as a hosted IP telephony and UCaaS platform and services provider, garnering a growing base among both services providers and businesses in Europe and North America.
As the market rapidly migrates to cloud services, businesses are increasingly looking to vendors to help them gain a competitive advantage. More than two million cloud business communications subscribers trust Mitel, learn how you can too.
MiContact Center Quality Management for Public Safety Agencies Safeguarding Mission-Critical Communications

Clear, rapid and efficient communications are the foundation of effective public safety operations. Public safety organizations— including 9-1-1 call centers, law enforcement agencies, emergency dispatch services and fire departments—invest heavily in identifying and implementing the best communications technology. Ensuring citizens in need can communicate with dispatch operators, as well as making sure field personnel and dispatchers can communicate with each other, is of paramount concern. But, for public safety organizations, it is also important to maintain a reliable, easily accessible record of these mission-critical communications.


MiContact Center Quality Management for Public Safety Agencies Safeguarding Mission-Critical Communications Designed to Address Unique Public Safety Requirements MiContact Center Quality Management, the professional interaction management solution that delivers versatile recording functionality combined with powerful quality assurance, monitoring, output and recording tools. It leverages a patent-pending Mitel Portable Voice Document (PVD™) technology at its core. The PVD technology enables the capture of calls as digital recordings, or voice documents. Key features and benefits of the MiContact Center Quality Management solution for public safety organizations include: • Capture all communications activity to support legal and regulatory compliance requirements • Retrieve and playback call recordings quickly to confirm vital details • Manage and combine groups of related calls to support incident reconstruction and investigation • Evaluate interactions in real-time or after the fact to identify performance strengths and weaknesses • Coach workers using integrated instant messaging to immediately impact call handling performance Mitel | 2 With Mitel’s PVD technology, in addition to the audio portion of the call, all related data about the interaction is encapsulated as well. This can include information from the communications network, the PBX, user-added text-based annotations and call tagging. Annotations provide additional context around an incident, while call tagging enables dispatchers to quickly append an incident note, such as “high speed pursuit” or “civil disturbance,” to a recording with the simple click of a button. All of this data is then embedded into one single media file, the PVD, which is centrally stored, managed and delivered via highly secure encrypted media file streaming. All of the information contained in the PVD becomes searchable metadata, meaning call takers, agents and dispatchers can quickly locate a call using a wide range of search criteria. When a call recording is needed to provide situational insight or to prove that critical policies and procedures have been followed, it can be easily produced. Incident recordings and the included metadata can be safely and securely shared with other authorized users and oversight personnel to simplify event reconstruction and expedite investigations. It builds on the Mitel PVD technology foundation by providing advanced quality assurance, personnel development and reporting tools, along with other unique features and options of particular benefit to public safety agencies, including: • Incident Reconstruction: This allows managers and other authorized personnel to play up to eight recordings simultaneously. Multiple calls associated with a single incident can be bundled together for ease of playback and information retrieval. Each recording has variable speed, volume and balance controls, ensuring the accurate capture of critical information. • Portable Incident Replay: The OAISYS Stand-Alone PVD Player, which enables convenient replay of recordings in the field or in a courtroom, also allows multiple calls to be played back simultaneously. The player provides a call visualization timeline and a full set of playback controls, including variable speed, balance and volume • Desktop Screen Recording: The desktop video recording works in synchronization with the voice recording to capture screen content, providing greater oversight and more robust incident reconstruction functionality, without disrupting call handler or network efficiency. • Secure User Access: An advanced administrative application allows for easy assignment of individual and group permissions, ensuring incident recordings are accessed only by those with proper authority and in accordance with established agency guidelines. In addition, log files showing the date, time and user name associated with the access of all recordings provide an audit trail to support legal and regulatory compliance requirements. • Flexible Recording Options: MiContact Center Quality Management is engineered to support sophisticated, highvolume recording needs and can operate either trunk-side or station-side and delivers data link integration with a wide range of business communications systems. Tracer also supports VOX recording for capturing dispatch center telephone and radio communications. Robust Evaluation, Training and Coaching Tools A slow or improper response to a public safety dispatch call can present serious legal implications. Solid communication skills and the ability to work well under extreme pressure are important qualities for police, fire, and ambulance dispatchers. In most cases, workers must develop these skills while on the job. They must deal with anxious or panicked callers, obtain critical information, assess caller needs and dispatch the appropriate response, all within a matter of moments. When emergency units are en route or on the scene, dispatchers must coordinate communication between multiple responders to ensure the appropriate deployment of resources for the situation. Effective evaluation, training and coaching tools that can help improve call taker and dispatcher proficiency with these challenging responsibilities are invaluable for public safety organizations. MiContact Center Quality Management allows a supervisor to review a recording and rate the call by grading a series of pre-selected questions/criteria. Calls can be evaluated live while they are in progress, and evaluations can contain an unlimited number of questions. Workers can also listen to and evaluate their own calls, helping to identify performance and workflow problems that may prevent caller needs from being met. MiContact Center Quality Management’s multi-channel Live Call Monitor feature allows calls to be monitored while in progress, enabling dispatch supervisors to easily and efficiently monitor interactions in real-time. The Auto Call Monitor feature enables automatic live monitoring of calls by worker or by dynamic search folders. This serves to streamline supervisor access for monitoring a range of important calls as they occur. This live and auto call monitoring functionality is further bolstered by the ability to add text-based comments directly to calls while they are in progress, which then become a permanent part of the incident recording along with the audio portion of the call. Communications center management can benefit from capturing observations in real-time and providing immediate feedback to their call handlers. It also provides fully integrated chat functionality, making it easier to oversee call handlers and provide support when needed. Dispatchers can request and obtain supervisor assistance via instant messaging. These communications are also logged in context with the audio recording, helping to support incident reconstruction. Flexible Storage, Easy Retrieval and Simple Playback Public safety agencies need to maintain call records for extended periods of time. A call may need to be reviewed months or even years after it occurred, and the risk of lost call data must be averted. The MiContact Center Quality Management software is deployed via built-to-order recording platforms with advanced fault tolerance and data protection capabilities to help ensure incident recordings are available when needed. In various configurations, from 56,000 up to 200,000 hours of call recordings can be stored on an Mitel Recording Server, and recordings can also be archived using the included DVD burner or over a Local Area Network (LAN) to an external storage resource. In public safety recording environments, it is common for courts, lawyers and compliance officers to request copies of dispatch communications, often with little advance notice. Tracer help to addresses those demands with simple and efficient call recording search and retrieval functionality, owed in part to its highly intuitive folder organizational structure. Similar to Microsoft Outlook©, static folders enable users to manually organize incident recordings as needed, while dynamic folders make it possible to automatically organize 
recordings based on pre-defined criteria or conditions set for that folder. Additionally, the MiContact Center Quality Management user interface is intuitively designed to help users quickly locate recordings by conducting a search on a wide variety of specific recording file attributes or by simply locating the recording within a dynamic search folder. The advanced search and retrieval capabilities allow public safety professionals to rapidly search hundreds of thousands of calls, delivering the correct recording or group of recordings in just seconds. In addition to sharing calls in PVD format via a secure link, authorized users can also export incident recordings to other file formats, such as WAV and MP3. Multi-channel export and playback allows related calls to be bundled together to efficiently create a total picture of the incident in question. A convenient and secure stand-alone player provides portable feature functionality for replaying incident recordings in courtroom environments or other remote settings. Reliable Call Recording and Incident Management Support MiContact Center Quality Management is a powerful call recording and incident management solution for emergency dispatch facilities, 9-1-1 centers and other public safety organizations. We combine the innovative call recording, playback and storage capabilities of our Mitel’s PVD technology with Tracer’s advanced functionality for quality assurance, incident reconstruction, employee coaching and training.

Monday, September 19, 2016


The Cloud Mystery Cleared Up

What does "in the cloud" mean?

Are my pictures, files and data somehow stored in midair?

The "cloud" is simply internet connectivity to a data center where your pictures, files and data (or in our case your telephone system) are stored on computer servers in multiple data centers around the country surrounded by technicians 24/7. In the cloud makes many people nervous because they do not understand how much more secure this is than storing your data on your own computer wherever it is located.
From webopedia.com:
Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personaldevices to handle applications. Cloud computing is comparable togrid computing, a type of computing where unused processing cycles of all computers in a network are harnesses to solve problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine.

Internet-Based Computing

In cloud computing, the word cloud (also phrased as "the cloud") is used as a metaphor for "the Internet," so the phrase cloud computing means "a type of Internet-based computing," where different services — such as servers, storage and applications  are delivered to an organization's computers and devices through the Internet.

The Hosted "Hospital"

Where would you prefer to be if you were very ill or seriously injured? Would you rather be in the hospital surrounded by doctors, nurses and testing apparatus or in your basement, closet or attic surrounded by dust, moisture and darkness?

When your telephone system experiences an outage or maintenance issue, when it's time for an upgrade or a new software revision, Hosted Service means that your system is in the data center constantly surrounded by technicians and testing equipment. Upgrades and software revisions happen seamlessly and let's not forget redundancy; your system is in multiple data centers so that in case of an outage you are still in business from another data center without worry.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Have your office phones ever been down?
Never again with a Mitel hosted solution through Quality Communications!


A traditional premise based system may seem like a cost effective way to keep control of your phone system. In truth it is riskier, probably more expensive and keeps you from taking advantage of  features that make your company and employees more productive, accessible and effective.


Ever Miss A Phone Call Because Your Phone Lines / Carrier Services Were Out?
When your phone lines or Internet service are down you miss calls and are unable to connect to the outside world which for most businesses today is as good as being out of business. Now there’s a solution! With Mitel hosted VoIP from Quality Communications there are no more phone lines to rely on, If your Internet service is down, calls are still answered by your personal Automated Attendant recording and/or automatically routed to your cell phone or any other phone in the world.


Built-in Disaster Recovery
In the event your office experiences a disaster and has to be vacated, take your phones with you.  Simply plug your Mitel VoIP phones in anywhere that has Internet service and it’s just like you’re back in the office again.  You can have phones at multiple locations such as remote offices, home offices, hotel rooms, etc. 


Get New Business Phones and Save Money Too!
Get rid of your expensive phone lines and start saving money today.  Keep your phone numbers, switch to Mitel hosted VoIP and get new VoIP phones.  One low monthly payment covers it all including local calls, long distance calls to the US and Canada, free on-site installation and training, free software upgrades, and more….It’s that simple. 


Service Is Provided 24/7

A staff of technicians will be monitoring, servicing and upgrading your system at multiple data centers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week providing you with the most reliable service possible. If a data center goes down, your service continues seamlessly from one of Mitel’s multiple redundant data centers.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

From PC Mag:
 

Mitel MiCloud is a cloud-based, feature-rich phone system that includes hardware, software, infrastructure, and support bundled together for one monthly subscription price on a per-user basis. Key advantages to MiCloud include an in-office experience regardless of location or device; simplified billing and support relationships by using a single company to provide an integrated solution; reduced capital expenditure and operational costs for hardware, maintenance, and personnel; plus enhanced reliability and redundancy through a cloud-based solution.
MiCloud is hosted in Mitel’s Class 4 data centers for 99.995 percent availability, with full redundancy for electrical circuits, cooling, and network connectivity along with similar measures for redundant and fault-tolerant server hardware. The data centers are designed, optimized, and maintained to industry standards for availability to deliver both high performance and extreme service reliability.

Simple Installation and Administration

Installing and administrating MiCloud are straightforward. Preconfigured phones arrive that simply plug into the company’s local network; log in with the appropriate access information, and calling is immediately available. Qualifying customers can get trained professional installation at no cost.
Users access MiCloud through the company’s broadband connection, with all setup, calling, and maintenance done through IP. Remote offices and home workers are all supported through standard Internet connections.
System administration is through a web portal, which allows administrators to create new ring groups, relocate extensions, and change or edit users as needed rather than having to rely on more expensive IT support.

From Desktop Phone to Mobile Device

MiCloud Business provides the option of leasing and using a desk phone, a PC softphone, or client software on a mobile device. Each user can have one number with one unified voicemail available on all devices, transfer calls between all devices, dial extensions within the company, and much more.
A unified communications application adds 20 features to a subscription, including access to company contacts through a corporate directory, presence indication and instant messaging (IM), desktop control of phone functions, contact importing from Microsoft Outlook and Android, and outbound calls from a mobile device through the MiCloud service. Operating systems and mobile devices supported include iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone along with standard web browser support and a desktop Windows client.
Should there be a disruption to the office from a power outage, natural disaster, or other event, the MiCloud Business Auto-attendant will manage calls automatically while its Mobile Twinning simultaneous-dial feature directs calls to a paired mobile phone.
The MiCloud service is supported out of two different geographically dispersed Class 4 data centers, with diverse path networking between them and the public switched telephone network to provide the highest level of core network resilience.

Multiple Seat Options to Meet Business Needs

MiCloud Business offers several seat options, enabling businesses to choose a combination of plans for their employees while paying only for the features they need. Plans start with a basic, easy-to-use phone system that includes the most popular features, such as Mobile Twinning simultaneous dialing, with options for unlimited local and long-distance calling or per-minute bundles. Extension-only seats are available for internal use.
Standard features include hunt/ring groups, interoffice four-digit extension dialing, call transfer, call forwarding, call park, call pick-up, call hold, do not disturb, call history, and user speed dial. Depending on the options selected, a seat can come with unlimited local and long-distance calling, corporate auto-attendant, automatically shifted routing plans based on time of day, customized music on hold, and voicemail with email forwarding.
Contact center options include supervisor and agent seats. Agent seats come with a suite of automated call distribution (ACD) and contact center features to efficiently distribute and move calls, while supervisor seats are able to conduct listen-in “silent” monitoring on agent calls in progress, real-time monitoring of the call queue, and access to historical reporting tools.

Advanced Call Center

For more advanced contact center needs, the MiCloud Business Contact Center supports up to 100 total agents, with a feature-rich set of ACD capabilities. Multiple skill groups can be created, with inbound calls prioritized and routed to the most appropriately skilled agent based on predefined criteria. Agents can be assigned to more than one skill group, with unique skill level proficiencies for each group.
Included in MiCloud Business Contact Center is support for remote agents, so home and remote workers can have complete access to ACD call routing and data features.

Conferencing and Collaboration

Audio conferencing is available with the purchase of a higher-end seat package and delivered through MiCollab. Up to 500 users can be supported concurrently in an audio conference. Web conferencing is also available, with an upper limit of 500 users.
Through MiCollab, videoconferencing with up to eight users can be supported in a software client. For dedicated, high-quality videoconferencing support, Mitel has teamed with Vidyo to offer a hosted cloud solution that supports video clients through PCs and mobile devices alongside dedicated teleconferencing solutions up to 1060p resolution.
Collaboration features can also be added through the Mitel MiCollab client. Up to 100 mobile users on Android or iOS can add features, including presence, IM, click-to-call from a corporate contact list, and mobile softphone dialing.

Desktop IP Devices

Customers can select from a range of Mitel phones to lease as a part of the MiCloud service package. Models include simple, entry-level phones for public areas and teleworkers DECT wireless phones, and high-end executive devices with wideband audio support and touch screen displays.
Mitel’s hot desking feature enables businesses to share a phone among multiple users, a useful capability for temporary workers and employees who travel between company locations. A user can log in to a phone using a specialized access code, followed by an extension number and pass codes. The Mitel desktop phone then loads the user’s personalized settings and forwards calls to the user at that phone.

MiCloud for Education

Mitel offers a simplified version of the MiCloud services for educational institutions, with three seat plan options. The service has a smaller features list but is designed and priced to work with school systems of all types, including those with constrained financial resources.
From Top 10 Best Business VOIP:
Mitel was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. They have offices, partners and sellers worldwide. Mitel is a provider that specifically caters for small to medium sized businesses. Services provided includes an Internet connection specifically designed to provide clearer voice quality for VoIP calling. Mitel will also provide and deliver configured IP phones. Mitel was responsible for designing one of the earliest PBX attempts – they tried to create a service unifying office voice and data control. The company has survived and reinvented itself with international investment from conglomerates such as British Telecom and Schroeder Ventures.

Features:

Mitel provide all their own services and all the research into and development of products is in-house. This means the advisors and technicians you speak to will have in-depth knowledge of the products and services provided.
Features include:
  • IP-PBX systems and software
     
  • Mobile / Cell compatibility
     
  • Conferencing and collaboration (voice/video/data) applications
     
  • IP business telephones – specifically configured for Mitel’s VoIP service.
     
  • Contact center/call center applications – caller ID, call forwarding, transfer, park, pickup and hold
     
  • Call history
     
  • Outbound caller ID, company name and number
     
  • Do not disturb settings
     
  • Unlimited local calling
     
  • Hot desk and softphone options
     
  • Messaging and voicemail options such as auto-attendant, computer and outlook integration, call queuing and voicemail to email.
     
  • Enterprise management applications
     
  • Mitel UC360 Collaboration Point
     
  • Virtual solutions/Virtualized voice applications
     
  • Back up power system hosted in highly secure data centers to prevent you from ever being totally offline
     
  • Provides specialist Internet connection designed for VoIP calls
     

VoIP Packages/Plans:

There are a number of plans offered to both small businesses and larger enterprises or contact centers. Prices are dependent on your business needs and are available on request from an agent either by phone or through the website.

SMALL BUSINESS PLANS:

Professional
Ideal for small companies with 1 to 10 employees. You have MiCloud Business’s standard features including mobile twinning, hot-desking, intuitive web-based administration.
Business: Extension Only
Extension Only enables a drop-in, four-digit extension number extended from the main MiCloud Business system. Outbound calls incur small charges.
Lite
For businesses that need the applications from MiCloud but don’t necessarily need unlimited calling time. Bundles are available and going over these will incur charges.

CONTACT CENTER PLANS:

Agent
Comes with ACD and Contact Center functionality features. Advanced features are available when agents are not logged in as ACD’s.
Extension Only With Voice Mail
This plan is the same as the extension-only setup for small businesses, but includes voicemail. Voice mails can be retrieved through the MiCloud Business system or through the voicemail to email service.
Advanced
Offers unlimited local and long distance calling plans. Features include mobile twinning, hot-desking, corporate auto attendant, voice mail to email support and contact dialing.
Supervisor
Supervisors have access to all the features available to Advanced and Agent users with the added benefits of silent monitoring, real-time queue monitoring and historical reporting.

Customer Support / Ease of Setup:

Mitel’s operations are really open and customers are given simple and effective customer support and solutions. For support there is one number to call and you are directed through to the correct person quickly. New customers are given one person as their individual point of contact to help through setup and initial use of the product.

Bottom Line:

Mitel looks at the business needs of entire companies, rather than simply looking at one area. The integration aspects of the communications system are advanced but remain easy to use. Having a single point of contact during set up is a really helpful way to get you started and introduce you to the product. Mitel definitely ensures you get the most from their business solutions, whatever size your business may be.

Friday, September 2, 2016

From VOIP Review:
 
 

Editorial Review

Serving more than 60 million users in over 100 countries around the world, Mitel is an industry leader in providing business communication solutions. They offer business phone systems, mobile services, collaboration applications, and contact center solutions for businesses of all sizes.
Impressive Portfolio of Communication Solutions
Mitel offers a broad range of solutions that cater to the needs of businesses regardless of size and industry. For small and mid-sized businesses, Mitel’s business phone systems,mobility, and collaboration solutions help fuel business growth. Their most popular SMB plans include MiCloud Office and MiCloud Business, both of which are available for affordable monthly prices. Mitel also offers mobile, unified communications, and contact center solutions that meet the demands of larger enterprises, too.
A True Global Leader
Headquartered in Ontario, Canada, Mitel powers more than 2 billion connections every day. Their 40 years of experience in the industry has allowed them to establish a strong market presence in Europe, Middle East and Africa. They have also built strategic partnerships with some of the world’s biggest brands, including Microsoft and Blackberry.

Mitel's Hosted PBX solution has really delivered on my businesses needs. Having a team of employees and contractors who collaborate remotely and customers based throughout North America, this solution has really provided the flexibility that we need. The ability for all users to easily log into any phone, route calls to their cell phone or another number and control their own experience through the Mitel Web Portal has made this any great system to use. Also, it was super easy to install! We just unpacked the phones, plugged them in to the network and entered each extension and PIN - and the install was done. The Mitel solution has met our needs and their staff has been great to work with. I would highly recommend them for your business.


Easy to Install -Plug in phones, type in the code and you are done. Flexible -We love the ability to log in on any phone and work from any desk or location within our offices! The mobile integration is great! Getting work calls routed to your mobile phone and being able to transfer them within devices is great!!
I really have no complaints about this service.