Tag Archive for: Unified Communications

Mitel to buy Toshiba’s Telecom division

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In blog #34 (March ’17) we posted that Toshiba was shutting down its Telecom division headquartered in Irvine CA.  At the time of the announcement it was a pure shut down… Toshiba did not try to sell their Telecommunications division but simply decided to shut it down.

The premise PBX market continues to shrink and as the Cloud telephony business ramps up, there was not enough runway for Toshiba to make the transition.  Toshiba sales have been declining for some time and the company has become far less visible and innovative than many of its competitors. Toshiba made an excellent PBX that competed with small business systems from the likes of Panasonic, Mitel, and NEC.

Toshiba had been losing some of its pull in the industry, it was still a shocking decision considering that the company has about a 3% market share in the U.S.

Fast forward to May ’17 and we learn that Mitel is picking up the parts from the Toshiba telecommunications business.

A little about Mitel:  They are based in Canada (Ottawa) and have annual revenues of about $850 million.

On May 3rd Mitel announced Q1 financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017.

Mitel announced they too are taking proactive cost reduction actions to align its operating expenses with its current business needs. This includes a workforce reduction of approximately 10% expected to be completed between now and the end of the year.

Financial Highlights from Continuing Operations

  Q1 2016
in millions
(except per share data)		 Q1 2017   Historical
Currency
GAAP Revenues $223.1   $233.0
GAAP Net Income (Loss) ($19.7)   ($11.8)
Non-GAAP Net Income2 $10.9 $10.5
GAAP EPS – basic ($0.16)   ($0.10)

Mitel Business Highlights this quarter included:

  • Recurring cloud seats grew by 45,000 during the quarter and now stand at 588,000
  • Working with a large service provider, Mitel is transitioning 10,000 employees of a second large European-based auto manufacturer from premise to a cloud-based Unified Communications solution.
  • A Midwestern US-based furniture retailer with more than 65 locations and an on-line presence selected MiCloud Enterprise and MiCloud Contact Center to connect all locations, centralize answering, and manage their advanced contact center needs including callback in queue and multi-media requirements.  The system is all hosted by Mitel. 

Mitel, on Thursday May 11th signed a Memorandum of Understanding to transfer assets and support obligations, including existing inventory, from Toshiba to Mitel. The agreement also includes a transition of product and services agreements from Toshiba customers to Mitel.

Mitel expects to close on the Toshiba deal this summer.

Besides transferring their existing inventory, Mitel will also be transferring all of their service and maintenance contracts to Mitel, so that Toshiba customers continue to have support as they move forward.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Mitel made its last acquisition in 2015 with the purchase of cloud-based UC provider Mavenir. The vendor made a bid to buy Polycom last year, although the deal fell through.

E-MetroTel Telephony Solution – UCX

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First American is a proud channel partner of E-MetroTel telephony solutions.   E-MetroTel, headquartered in Plano Texas, is a cost effective telephony and contact center solution targeted at the small and mid-enterprise market.

Here is where E-MetroTel excels:

  • Perfect for companies with up to 5,000 users.
  • Perfect for companies that have legacy systems like Nortel who what to save money by replacing the core but reuse the handsets.
  • Perfect for companies who want a traditional Appliance solution delivered and installed at their site; or
  • Perfect for companies who want to install the E-MetroTel Software on their own virtual servers; or
  • Perfect for companies who want a hosted “Cloud” solution where they pay for what they use on a subscription basis!

The E-MetroTel UCX is a cost-effective SIP Based Unified Communications solution that helps customers extend the life of their existing IP, Digital or Analog and add new open standard SIP devices. Employees become more productive and collaborative by using new UC capabilities – while leveraging the existing telephony investments and reducing ongoing maintenance cost.

UCX supports Analog, Digital and VoIP phones — in any combination.

UCX delivers the latest Unified Communication features such as integrated mobility, Home working, Call Recording, Meet-Me Conferencing including support for SIP compliant telephones and cost effective SIP trunks.

The Product Family of the E-MetroTel line is:

E-MetroTel Telephony Solution - UCX

The feature rich, E-MetroTel solutions includes:

Mobility Never miss another call. Ensure all calls find you based on rules you create, using features like scheduler, simultaneous ringing and privileged lists. Don’t want customers to know you’re working from home? Make and receive calls on your mobile device, with the appearance of using your office phone.
Conference Bridge  Host your own on-demand conference calls for both internal and external attendees, with all the features like conference recording and add or remove participants. It includes: Password-Protected Conference Bridges, Third-party dial-in through DID, Participant Management & Conference Recording.
IVR Interactive Voice Response offers several options to help ensure that your callers don’t get confused and trapped. Within each IVR, you can choose whether or not to allow your callers to dial an extension at any time. This is useful for creating different kinds of IVR experiences. Play a sound to the caller, then continue to the next action. This is for greetings, prompts, instructions, etc. Use the Sound Manager to record whatever sounds you want.
Call    Recording Record Calls on Demand or all calls. Complete set of call records that are easy to access, browse and export. Set up recording of every call made or received on an extension-by-extension basis. Also you can create a rule that dialing a particular sequence in the course of a call (such as *1) will result in the call being recorded.
Contact
Center 		 Easy to configure and use yet highly effective contact center solution with advanced reporting. Minimize customer hold time by sending the caller to the agent that is properly trained to handle their query. Transfer callers who require specific handling in a certain area, such as technical support or sales, directly to agents. Keep the callers in queue if all agents are busy and provide choices to go to another group, supervisor or even have the system call them back.
Integrated Messaging Simple flexible voice messages users retrieve from their hard client, Softphone, portal or even via email. Leave you a Voicemail message that can be sent to you as a .wav file to your favorite email client.
Call Detail Reporting Complete set of call records that are easy to access, browse and export. A log of all calls made including: source number; destination number; call duration, date and time. Full graphic reporting included as standard.

UCX WebRTC Client

WebRTC stands for Web Real-Time Communications, and the technology is focused on embedding real-time communications, such as voice, directly within web browsers. The WebRTC client that’s built into every UCX system allows you to use a simple web-interface on a laptop, desktop, tablet or smart phone.

E-MetroTel Telephony Solution - UCX

If your company is looking for a new, feature rich, telephony product that is easy on your budget E-MetroTel likely has what you are looking for.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

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The UCaaS market today is comprised of pure-plays, network operators, cable MSOs, ISPs, system integrators, and traditional premises-based vendors. With a multitude of options, things can be confusing for businesses trying to find the right provider and service to fit their needs,” said Diane Myers, senior research director of VoIP, UC, and IMS for IHS Markit and author of the fourth quarter 2016 Analyst Insight report. “Today, as our report and the data indicate, the leader is BroadSoft, comprising the larger share of installed base seats running over its platform.”

In November 2016, BroadSoft announced it surpassed 15 million cloud UC lines deployed globally, – an industry leading milestone three times greater than the next nearest competitor. At the same time, BroadSoft market share for new cloud UC line shipments is double that of the next closest competitor, a key trend as BroadSoft expects the market for new cloud PBX/unified communications will surpass on-premise PBX/UC equipment shipments by 2020.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

Enterprise PBX Market Continues Slide Despite Improving Economic Conditions

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Campbell, CALIFORNIA —Technology market research firm Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), reported in 2015 that the global enterprise telephony and unified communications (UC) market closed down 4 percent in 2014, to $8.7 billion, as businesses continue to hold off new purchases and upgrades of PBX equipment despite improving worldwide economic conditions.  The trend appears to continue thru all of 2015 as well.

The overall market decline masks the health of the evolving UC applications segment, which jumped 20 percent in 2014, energized by the demand for tools to increase workforce productivity.

The data comes from Infonetics’ fourth quarter 2014 (4Q14) and year-end Enterprise Unified Communications Voice Equipment market share, size and forecast report, which tracks PBX phone systems, voice over IP gateways, UC applications and IP phones.

“The enterprise telephony market continues to be tough. Just as we see one area begin to improve, it’s offset by slowdowns in geographies or market segments. Underscoring the declines are not only slowing businesses purchases but also competitive pricing, which has created unpredictable swings,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS. “The move to the cloud is having an impact in certain markets, particularly North America.”
MORE ENTERPRISE TELEPHONY MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

  • Globally, PBX revenue, including TDM (time-division multiplexing) and IP PBXs, dropped 6 percent in 2014
  • Vendors remain in a battle to gain customers and hold onto existing ones as enterprises migrate to IP and UC solutions: In 2014, the top four PBX revenue market share leaders were, in alphabetical order, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel and NEC
  • Microsoft continues to see strong sales on the UC front, solidifying its position atop the unified communications market share leaderboard

Avaya Marks a Decade as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony

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Old Phone 2Avaya, a global leader in business communications systems, soft-ware and services, today announced it has reached one full decade as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quad-rant for Corporate Telephony with the most recent report.

The 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony report notes that the “market is evolving from a focus on innovation in proprietary hardware to use of commodity hardware and standards-based software. While most telephony solutions shipping today are Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled or IP-PBX solutions, the associated endpoints are a mix of time division multiplexing (TDM) and IP.”

Avaya has fully embraced these trends by offering telephony as both a fully virtualized solution for customer-preferred servers and in an appliance model on commodity servers optimized for Avaya. In terms of end points, Avaya uniquely offers TDM and IP enabled end-points for H.323 and SIP as well as a comprehensive client for Windows, Android and iOS devices.

When it comes to purchasing new or upgrading systems, Gartner recommends that “decision criteria for corporate telephony platforms should focus on high-availability, scalable solutions, which support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), desktop and softphone functionality, and the ability to integrate with enterprise IT applications while delivering toll-grade voice quality.”

Avaya’s standards-based (SIP) telephony software delivers high quality voice capabilities that can be seamlessly extended to and accessed from desktop phones, softphones and mobile devices. Avaya Aura® Communication Manager, the company’s flagship telephony and unified communications technology for enterprises, supports some of the world’s largest contact centers, global businesses, and highly critical emergency communications operations.

With the acquisition of Esna earlier this year, Avaya now enables workers to access communications from inside browser-based applications such as Salesforce, Google for Work, Microsoft 365 and others, eliminating the need for them to move in and out of different applications and thus streamlining work streams and display screens. Avaya Engagement Development Platform enables developers to use a simple tool to tightly integrate communications into business processes and contextual data to further streamline workflows and increase productivity.

Quotes
“The expectation of simplicity, quality and speed of implementation for telephony is higher than any other technology. It’s been a driving factor in everything we do even as business communications technologies grew into multimedia applications over any device. We continue to set new benchmarks in developing and delivering the communications experience that engages the world’s businesses.”
Gary E. Barnett, SVP and GM, Avaya Engagement Solutions

Voice systems and telepresence are hurting, but vendors see growth in other areas

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January 11, 2016 | By Chris Talbot

Voice and telepresence are both suffering as vendor revenue in those areas continues to decline, but other enterprise infrastructure areas are growing. New research from Synergy Research Group shows that wireless LAN infrastructure products are growing the fastest – something that comes as little surprise as more enterprises roll out Wi-Fi deployments with the latest 802.11 technologies.

The Synergy report shows that revenue for WLAN products grew by about five percent in the last four quarters, whereas Ethernet switches grew at four percent, data center servers were a little above two percent, unified communications applications grew about four percent, routers were barely above zero percent, voice was down two percent and telepresence was down almost five percent.

It’s good news and bad news for the vendors involved. Cisco leads six out of the seven market categories. The exception is data center servers, where Hewlett Packard Enterprise reigns. HPE came in second in the Ethernet switches, routers and WLAN categories (the last is thanks to its 2015 acquisition of Aruba Networks).

“Cisco remains in a league of its own, accounting for a third of the market and gaining market share in the only segment where it is not the current leader,” said Jeremy Duke, founder and chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, in a statement. “Across these hardware-oriented product areas HPE is the only broad-based challenger to Cisco’s dominance and it has been steadily increasing its share of the market. However, what we are now seeing is the strong growth of cloud, hosted and collaborative software solutions, which is introducing competition from non-traditional areas and causing market boundaries to blur.”

The other number two vendors include – Dell in data center servers, Avaya in voice systems, Microsoft in UC applications and Polycom in telepresence.

But there are some up-and-comers gaining market share in each category, including Microsoft in UC apps and voice systems, Arista Networks in Ethernet switching, Mitel in voice systems, HPE in WLAN, Huawei in telepresence, Lenovo in data center servers and Cisco in data center servers.

Whether this could mean significant changes in market share and dominant vendors in the seven categories over the next several years is anybody’s guess. It seems unlikely there will be a repeat of the huge shake-up in networking that happened in the late 1990s, but transitions could happen.

Despite Improving Economic Conditions Enterprise PBX Market Continues Slide

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Campbell, CA (March 10, 2015)—Technology market research firm Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), today reported that the global enterprise telephony and unified communications (UC) market closed down 4 percent in 2014, to $8.7 billion, as businesses continue to hold off new purchases and upgrades of PBX equipment despite improving worldwide economic conditions.

Infonetics chart
The overall market decline masks the health of the evolving UC applications segment, which jumped 20 percent in 2014, energized by the demand for tools to increase workforce productivity.

The data comes from Infonetics’ fourth quarter 2014 (4Q14) and year-end Enterprise Unified Communications Voice Equipment market share, size and forecast report, which tracks PBX phone systems, voice over IP gateways, UC applications and IP phones.

“The enterprise telephony market continues to be tough. Just as we see one area begin to improve, it’s offset by slowdowns in geographies or market segments. Underscoring the declines are not only slowing businesses purchases but also competitive pricing, which has created unpredictable swings,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS at Infonetics Research, now part of IHS. “The move to the cloud is having an impact in certain markets, particularly North America.”

MORE ENTERPRISE TELEPHONY MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

  • Globally, PBX revenue, including TDM (time-division multiplexing) and IP PBXs, dropped 6 percent in 2014 from 2013, and dipped 1 percent in 4Q14 from 4Q13
  • PBX line shipments declined 3 percent in 2014 from 2013; In 4Q14, line shipments were up 4 percent year-over-year, driven by pure IP PBX
  • Vendors remain in a battle to gain customers and hold onto existing ones as enterprises migrate to IP and UC solutions: In 2014, the top four PBX revenue market share leaders were, in alphabetical order, Avaya, Cisco, Miteland NEC

Microsoft continues to see strong sales on the UC front, solidifying its position atop the unified communications market share leaderboard

Cisco, Others Face Tough Competition From Microsoft

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The PBX is losing its grip on the enterprise.

Infonetics Research said this week that unified communications (UC) investments are replacing typical PBX purchases, with North America losing the most PBX market share: The region is down double digits from 2013’s third quarter, Infonetics found.

That’s because businesses are holding off from buying new PBXs as they evaluate cloud alternatives and put money into UC applications, instead of PBXs.

“There is competitive pressure as well, but not as much as in the past,” said Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC and IMS at Infonetics Research.

Worldwide, the PBX market – which includes TDM, hybrid and pure IP – dipped 7 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2014, but it has risen 5 percent sequentially, according to the research firm. Still, compared to a year ago, PBX license shipments have dropped 2 percent. Around the globe, PBX revenue leaders are, in alphabetical order, Avaya, Cisco and NEC, Infonetics said.

But those companies face tough competition from UC suppliers, where Microsoft, purveyor of the Lync platform, stands out as the frontrunner, said Infonetics. To that point, UC applications jumped 21 percent in 2014’s third quarter, compared to the year-earlier period.

November 25, 2014 – By Kelly Teal

Mitel Takes Aim at Avaya With ShoreTel Bid

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Anyone thinking about signing a deal with ShoreTel for unified communications gear might want to take a closer look now that Mitel has made public its hopes to buy the company.

Mitel says it’s prepared to pay 24% over the price last Friday of ShoreTel stock (about $540 million), but ShoreTel says no and won’t negotiate, according to a letter Mitel’s CEO wrote to the chairman of ShoreTel. Despite the rebuff, Mitel plans to persist and that means ShoreTel customers should be vigilant.

At the very least, businesses weighing whether to buy ShoreTel gear should find out the likely impact of a merger, says Ken Landoline, a principal analyst with Current Analysis. “Beat up your channel about what does this mean for me?” he says.

Likely it won’t be anything bad because Mitel wouldn’t want to alienate ShoreTel customers by shutting down products they have invested in and perhaps hope to rely on for years, says Jeremy Duke, CEO of Synergy Research group. “They’d be on thin ice,” he says, if they did that. “The market is too competitive. They have to keep the customer base happy.”

An unhappy customer base would leave the Mitel/ShoreTel entity open to poaching by the two big unified communications leaders Cisco and Avaya, he says.

Still, potential ShoreTel customers should make sure that the terms of ongoing support for products are spelled out in whatever contracts they sign, says Landoline, so they know they won’t be stranded if the company is acquired, and its product roadmap changes.

By making public Mitel’s offer to buy the company is putting pressure on ShoreTel’s board by bringing the proposal directly to the attention of shareholders. “[W]e have a proven track record of successfully completing and integrating transactions and are firmly committed to bringing the benefits of a combined organization to our respective customers, employees and other stakeholders,” says Mitel CEO Richard McBee in an Oct. 20 letter to Charles Kissner, chairman of the ShoreTel board.

If Mitel succeeds, it would move the combined company up the ladder of market leaders by revenue in unified communications – at least in the U.S., says Duke. If U.S. on-premises gear plus unified-communications as a service market share for Q1 2014 are compared Cisco (28.7%), Avaya (13.8%), ShoreTel (8.7%) and Mitel (7.1%) rank numbers one, two, three and four respectively, according to Duke. Post merger, that would put Mitel/ShoreTel in second place and bump Avaya third.

He says the prime motivation for the deal may be to boost Mitel’s share of the U.S. market, similar to the way its acquisition of Aastra in January gave it the number 1 ranking in unified communications for Western Europe, Duke says. The Aastra deal also pushed Mitel into the realm of billion-dollar companies by revenue.

Author:  Tim Greene @ Networkworld

Keeping the Nortel CS1000 Alive

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Avaya’s announcement of a “final release” of Nortel CS1000 at version R7.6 appears to have left these customers with one choice: rip and replace.

Enterprises that have Nortel CS1000 platforms and phones were hit hard by the Nortel’s bankruptcy. When Nortel’s telecom related assets were acquired by Avaya and GENBAND, the CS1000 customers became dependent on Avaya for ongoing upgrades and maintenance. Avaya’s announcement of a “final release” of CS1000 at version R7.6 appears to have left these customers with one choice: rip and replace.

Rip and Replace
The rip and replace solution presents several problems for the CS1000 owner. First, there is the expense of a new platform; in most cases new servers will be required. There certainly will be new software, management tools, operational procedures, and re-training of IT staff.

Beyond the core platform, there is also their considerable investment in desk phones. Many enterprises have proprietary Nortel TDM and/or Nortel UNIStim IP phones that are not supported by other vendors. With nearly half the cost of an upgrade tied to desk phones, replacing endpoints can be one of the biggest costs, and, of course, every new phone requires an end user to be retrained. And, since CS1000 customers have felt the pain of being tied to one vendor, standards-based SIP endpoints are in-demand.

The technicians that support the CS1000 and UNIStim phones are also moving on: either retiring or learning new systems. As CS1000 technicians refocus on other platforms, their numbers dwindle, impacting availability. As time goes by, the shortage in expertise and parts drives up maintenance fees.

Users will have to be re-trained. New apps will need to be introduced that essentially replace the CS1000 apps. UNIStim phones will have to be replaced. Moving to Unified Communications will be limited unless the CS1000 is eliminated.

IT’s Goals
Given the expense and complexity of rip and replace it’s no surprise that this is not a CS1000 owner’s first choice. An IT team’s goals for the continued life of the CS1000 are likely to include:

  • Extending the life of legacy UNIStim endpoints that can’t be converted to SIP
  • Building a true SIP-based solution
  • Maintaining feature transparency, thereby saving staff time and retraining users
  • Using the enterprise network or Cloud-based service
  • Adding Mobility (smart devices)
  • Offering UC to a range of endpoints (PC/Mac, tablet, phone)
  • Adding Video & Collaboration
  • Supporting Advanced Messaging

A GENBAND Solution
GENBAND has acquired Nortel’s carrier assets. Using their acquired intellectual property theyhave introduced three alternative paths for the CS1000 owner. All three pathways extend the useful life of the CS1000. The pathways not only allow the retention of the CS1000 investment, they also permit the addition of new capabilities for the users.
ScreenShot002
Three GENBAND Solutions

Wrap the CS1000 with a Cloud Overlay
This solution uses the GENBAND cloud-based service called NUViA™. NUViA™ is an enterprise-class Unified Communications as a Service designed to eliminate the need for premises-based session/call control. It is powered by GENBAND’s EXPERiUS™ solutions which is a platform that ties its heritage to the Nortel MCS platform.

NUViA services can overlay the CS1000 implementation without replacing the existing CS1000 hardware or software. It offers an overlay of UC, video and mobility applications on top of the CS 1000. The enterprise is free to use as little or as much as they want since it is sold on a per seat basis.

Migrate Endpoints to Cloud Based Core
This path expands the NUViA cloud based solution. The enterprise re-registers the UNIStim IP or SIP phones into the cloud-based NUViA system. The DID’s can be moved into SIP or cloud connections or can be maintained on premise gateways registered into NUViA. This allows the enterprise to be always current with the latest features. This solution is also priced on a per seat basis.

Migrate Endpoints to Premises Based Core
This third alternative moves the session/call control to GENBAND’s EXPERiUS™ service. EXPERiUS ties its heritage to the Nortel MCS application server. Given the heritage the feature set will be familiar to CS1000 users. However EXPERiUS is very much a fully virtualized platform with a hardware freedom model where enterprises can select Dell, HP, or IBM servers. The enterprise would re-register UNIStim, IP or SIP phones to the on-premises EXPERiUS servers. Enterprises can then add UC, video and mobility applications.

GENBAND’s Intelligent Messaging Manager integrates with EXPERiUS for voice mail, including emulation of much of the Call Pilot’s telephone interface.

The Benefits
The benefits of the three alternative solutions are:

  • Limited or no user training except for new features
  • The option to select either CAPEX solution with on-premises or an OPEX solution via the cloud
  • Retaining the Nortel phones can save $200 to $500 per user
  • Migrating forward with a SIP-based solution
  • Deploying a full set of UC features
  • No SIP device licenses

Conclusions
The enterprise may select to rip and replace their IP PBX. However, the GENBAND solutions offer a lower impact path for the future. The financial expenses will be lower if the enterprise can continue using its existing CS1000 and UNIStim phone investment.

This is not to say that the GENBAND is the best solution. The enterprise should look at the ROI on both the GENBAND solutions and a rip and replace implementation. It may be that the enterprise is ready to replace the UNIStim phones and the CS1000 is at the end of its ROI life. The GENBAND solutions offer another benchmark for comparison.

Author: Eric Krapf at nojitter