Aastra Launches Revolutionary Multimedia Collaboration Solution at Gitex

DUBAI, UAE, October 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Aastra, a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market, continues to enrich its Unified & Collaborative Communications portfolio by launching a new Multimedia Collaboration Solution featuring High Definition (HD) Video at Gitex Technology Week in Dubai on October 14 -18 (Zabeel Hall: Stand ZL-D5).

The Aastra BluStar™ Ecosystem marks a new era in enterprise communications by offering multimedia communication solutions that deliver a powerful video collaboration experience across multiple devices. These productivity enhancing tools provide more choice and flexibility to answer the increasingly diverse communication needs of today's modern enterprise. With its intuitive user-interfaces, BluStar provides users with a high quality and easy-to-use natural collaboration experience.  Aastra BluStar Ecosystem takes business communications to the next level!

With a consistent user experience across a variety of corporate and personal devices - such as the Aastra BluStar™ 8000i Desktop Media Phone, PCs, Notebooks, iPads and iPhones - coupled with simplified deployment and administration, BluStar offers unparalleled user friendliness.  

One main advantage of Aastra's technology used for video conferencing is that it eliminates the need for costly MCUs (Multi-point Control Units).

Peter Hofman, Aastra's Regional President for Middle East, Africa, China and India comments "We are proud to bring this innovative technology to the Middle East. The need to reduce travel costs as well as time away from the office has traditionally been one of the biggest drivers for video communications, and is a use case that can provide a solid return-on-investment (ROI). Today, companies are increasingly adopting video to gain a strategic advantage. The use of video for both conferencing and collaboration (i.e. real time sharing of documents and other forms of contents) can lead to faster decision making, improved communications with partners and customers, and a faster time to market for new products and services."

Joining Aastra on the stand will be Ingate Systems AB, Aastra's Swedish A2P2 technology partner that will be exhibiting its latest Enterprise Session Boarder Controllers and Firewalls. Ingate SIParator, a certified Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) for the Aastra MX-ONE 5.0 is a solution for making secure remote UC and SIP communication possible. The solution enables telecom users to connect to their private networks over the internet and leverage the benefits of UC no matter where they are: in the hotel, at the airport or even at home without any need for VPN or port forwarding. The Software trial version of the SIParator E-SBC is now available free-of-charge for 30 days for Aastra customers and can be downloaded from http://www.ingate.com/Try_Ingate.php

About Aastra MEA

Aastra Middle East and Africa is the regional business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited, a company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market. Headquartered in Concord, Ontario, Canada, Aastra develops and delivers innovative communications products and applications for businesses. Aastra's operations are truly global with more than 50 million installed lines around the world and a direct and indirect presence in more than 100 countries. Aastra is entirely dedicated to enterprise communications and offers IP telephony and Unified Communications solutions individually tailored to satisfy its customers' requirements. These range from feature-rich call managers for small and medium businesses and highly scalable ones for large enterprises, associated UC applications, integrated mobility, multimedia call center solutions and high definition video communications to a wide selection of desk phones and cordless terminals. With a strong focus on open standards, Aastra enables enterprises to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. For additional information on Aastra, visit our website at  http://www.aastra.com/mea.

Aastra® is a registered trademark of Aastra Technologies Limited in the United States and Canada. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.