Mitel Introduces Freedom - Flexible Communications Architecture for Unified Communications

Mitel has introduced its new Mitel Freedom architecture, a single software stream that provides businesses looking to integrate a voice solution with a variety of communications options. It's predicted to save businesses up to 45% in mobility costs, while reducing the amount of communications servers needed by 85%.

With Mitel Freedom, customers are provided with an in-office experience, giving them access to a large suite of UC features, regardless of the mobile device they use and their location, as well as an open architecture so that organizations can design a communications network that integrates the best network and desktop applications for their objectives and architecture. The total cost of ownership is manageable and predictable, due to flexible purchasing, financing, and subscription options that range from self-managed to cloud-based UC services, or anywhere in-between.

Along with that, Mitel is providing new supporting offerings and capabilities. Among them are Mitel AnyWare, a cloud-based unified communications service; desktop virtualization integration with VMware View; and unified communications support for mobile devices such as Android, BlackBerry, and iPad.

"The most important part of this announcement is the new Freedom architecture, which Mitel says is pointed at the end user being able to have an in-office experience anywhere on any device," says UCStrategies UC Expert Nancy Jamison. "For the IT manager, it is pointed at being able to fit Mitel into any infrastructure, on any platform, and on any network. One of the examples Mitel provided was a customer that was an all Cisco shop when Mitel first installed its solutions. The customer then switched over from Cisco to HP, and Mitel's solution still worked in the new environment. This is a scenario that Mitel has long been behind, but they have striven to make it more so with the Freedom release."

Jamison adds, "In all it was a pretty solid announcement. Mitel emphasized that they felt the need to come out and explain really where they are after having gone public earlier this year, and felt now was the time to do it as they have other announcements coming out early in 2011."

According to Blair Pleasant of UCStrategies, "Several things stand out in this announcement - openness, mobility, and flexibility to provide unified communications capabilities in the way that makes the most sense for the customer, whether premise-based, SaaS-based, or a managed service. Mitel is making it easy for customers to be able to get the services or capabilities in the way that they want." She adds, "As companies, particularly SMBs, start migrating to the cloud, Mitel is well positioned in this area."

For more information, visit www.mitel.com.