Frost & Sullivan Confers Product Line Strategy Leadership Award on Mitel for its Hosted IP Telephony and UCC Solutions Portfolio
-- The sheer diversity of the company's product line sets it apart from the competition
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Sept. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the hosted Internet protocol (IP) telephony and unified communications and collaboration (UCC) services and platforms market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Mitel with the 2014 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Line Strategy Leadership. Mitel was one of the first premises-based solution providers to develop hosted communications solutions. The company took full advantage of this head start and now offers the broadest set of hosted communications platforms, endpoints and service capabilities to service providers and end-user organizations.
Long before most other private branch exchange (PBX) vendors targeted this space, Mitel launched its Multi-Instance Communications Director, which is now known as MiVoice Business. This high-density platform has been designed especially for service providers looking to brand their own hosted IP UCC services and provide billing and management support. As the platform's architecture is flexible, it enables service providers to deliver a more distinct set of capabilities to each customer.
"Mitel has also been among the first UCC vendors to roll out a virtualized solution—Virtual Mitel Communications Director, which was later renamed MiVoice Business," said Frost & Sullivan Program Director Elka Popova. "With the value-enhancing MiVoice Business platform, service providers can deliver highly customized UCC solutions to businesses that require integration with premises-based platforms and databases."
Several other elements make up Mitel's cloud communications product and services portfolio, including MiCollab and MiContact Center, as well as the MiCloud retail and wholesale services suite. Tied together for a seamless experience through the Mitel Freedom Architecture, these solutions offer a comprehensive set of PBX, UCC and contact center capabilities.
Thanks to the recent acquisition of Aastra, Mitel's product portfolio now also includes the Clearspan platform. As a multi-tenant platform developed specifically for service provider networks, Clearspan offers efficient and cost-effective scalability, which enables providers to target businesses of all sizes. Overall, the acquisition has given a boost to Mitel's market share and capabilities, including its range of products and services, channel partners, geographic reach, installed base, and sales and marketing resources.
Recognizing that managed service providers and partners are not always well-equipped to leverage cloud-based infrastructure to offer robust managed UCC solutions, Mitel has also introduced the Virtualized Datacenter Accreditation program. The program, designed for datacenters and platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service providers, involves a verification process to certify the infrastructure capabilities required to support the company's voice and UCC applications.
With such a diverse product and service portfolio, Mitel has managed to outdo its competitors on many fronts. Its compelling one-stop shop caters to the needs of end-user organizations of various sizes. While services based on the company's MiVoice Business platform are popular among small- and medium-sized businesses as it provides the same cost-efficiencies delivered by multi-tenant platforms, services delivered on its virtualized MiVoice Business platform appeal to larger organizations due to the richer functionality and enhanced security associated with dedicated software instances, among other reasons.
"Unlike its competitors, Mitel can support private, public and hybrid external cloud environments as well as private internal clouds," noted Popova. "The company uses a single software stream for all the different delivery models, thus providing flexibility and investment protection for customers."
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Mitel's installed base has expanded rapidly. In the second quarter of 2014, the company reported a total of 754,045 cloud seats and 195,673 recurring cloud seats. As the adoption of hosted IP telephony and UCC solutions continues to accelerate globally and in the North American region, the company is likely to stay on a strong growth path.
The Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Line Strategy Leadership is presented each year to a company that has demonstrated the most insight into customer needs and product demands. The recipient company should have optimized its product line by leveraging products with the various price, performance, and feature points required by the market.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
About Mitel
Mitel® (Nasdaq:MITL) (TSX:MNW) is a global leader in business communications that easily connect employees, partners and customers -- anywhere, anytime and over any device, for the smallest business to the largest enterprise. Mitel offers customers maximum choice with one of the industry's broadest portfolios and the best path to the cloud. With more than US$1 billion in combined annual revenue, 60 million end-user customers worldwide, and #1 market share in Western Europe, Mitel is a clear market leader in business communications. For more information, go to www.mitel.com.
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Media Contact:
Frost & Sullivan
Mireya Espinoza
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Amy MacLeod, Media
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Cynthia Navarro, Industry Analysts
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