Aastra Makes Communication Even Easier for SMBs

JOHANNESBURG, May 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Aastra launches its flagship solution in South Africa

Aastra, a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market launched the Aastra 470 Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solution in South Africa. The launch event held in Johannesburg this month and organised by Aastra Advanced Partner and national distributor Jatan Telecom, attracted the South African IT and Telecoms channel community of resellers and system integrators.

The award-winning Aastra 470 offers tangible benefits to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It is an all-in-one solution, which is quick to install and easy to manage. Its increased focus on simplicity empowers SMBs to make the most of the features available for better communications with colleagues and customers.

"We are extremely excited to launch this new, flexible, competitive and feature-rich solution into Southern Africa. The Aastra A470 stands out in a crowded marketplace, giving businesses access to a telephony environment and value-added communication applications that truly improve their staff's efficiency and mobility while lowering total cost of ownership." says Rob Browne, Channel Manager for Jatan Telecom.

The Aastra 400 series of communications servers were specifically developed to enhance small and medium businesses' internal communication, improve communication with customers, save costs and enable users to be more responsive at all times, whether on or off site. With embedded Unified Communications and Collaboration applications such as voice and HD video conferencing, click-to-call, automatic attendant, call centre, voicemail, unified messaging, voice recording and hotel applications at its core, the Aastra 470 is already benefiting businesses across the globe, helping them to be more productive.

Small and medium businesses can have advanced and complex communications requirements - the Aastra 470 fulfils these needs by combining high level features with a flexible, scalable and simple to use solution supporting both traditional and state-of-the art Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technologies and open standard protocols (SIP).

Faster and easier deployments

Aastra 470 has a simple installation process. For example, 50 employees can be added to the communication server in one go and IP phones can auto-provision themselves as easy as plug-n-play. By taking less time to install, the Aastra 470 becomes even more cost effective - a key factor for both channel partners and business owners.

A wealth of features within easy reach

Aware that SMBs often have limited IT resources and that different people within an organisation have different needs, Aastra has added a simple to use web portal to enable employees to manage elements of their phone settings themselves - whether they need to change voicemail or presence settings or route calls.

Facilitating communications

To help small and medium sized businesses to be more productive, Aastra has also introduced some innovative features which automatically provide callers with useful information if the person they are trying to contact is not immediately available. Voicemails can now be linked with an Outlook calendar, so if a caller tries to get hold of an employee when they are in a meeting, the voicemail message automatically alerts them to when the meeting is due to finish and when the employee is likely to be free. Similarly, callers can now be automatically informed about their position in a call queue.

Strong back up

Leveraging the strong networking capabilities of the Aastra 470 in branch office scenarios, this latest release includes dual homing as a simple fallback capability for Aastra SIP phones. In the event of a broken network, any other Aastra 470 in the same network can be used in order to offer a backup registration to the SIP phones. This economic failsafe backup ensures customers enjoy reliable and robust communications without any disruption. Additionally a secure remote management tool allows the customer or their service provider to manage the pool of distributed systems in the network very efficiently.

Aastra - The number 1 choice for SMBs

According to Zak Evans, Country Manager for Aastra Telecom South Africa, "We want to set the standard when it comes to excellence and solutions that offer tangible benefits to SMBs. For several consecutive years we have been recognised as the number one vendor for SMBs in Europe*. Business communications are at the heart of everything we do at Aastra and our focus remains on helping SMBs communicate and collaborate in the most efficient way."  

For further information about Aastra 400, please visit http://www.aastra.com/aastra-400.htm

To read an independent report on the Aastra 400, visit http://intecom.aastraintecom.com/current-analysis/aastra-400/index.php

*  Source: © MZA Ltd,  Corded PBX/IP PBX market - Q4 2012 edition published in March 2013, sub 100 extensions

About Aastra Telecom South Africa

Aastra Telecom South Africa is the southern-African business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited, (TSX:"AAH"), a leading 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. With a strong focus on open standards, Aastra enables enterprises to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. 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 one of the most complete portfolios of 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 deskphones and cordless terminals. For additional information on Aastra, visit our website at http://www.aastrasa.co.za

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.