TMCnet News
Mitel Announces Datacenter Accreditation for Cloud-Based Unified Communications Services(GlobeNewswire - Canada Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) PHOENIX, Feb. 7, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL), a leading provider of unified communications (UC) software solutions, today announced a Virtualized Datacenter Accreditation program for datacenters, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers. This comprehensive program provides a verification process to certify the infrastructure qualities and attributes required to support Mitel voice and UC applications. To date, Mitel has certified three IaaS providers including Artisan Infrastructure, Host.net, and Hosting.com, who intend to support or offer hosted voice and UC solutions to the market in the coming months based on Mitel cloud-ready software. The accreditation program is designed to ensure that any Managed Service Provider (MSP) or Mitel authorizedPARTNERS are able to leverage cloud-based infrastructure to provide world-class managed UC solutions. "Managed Service Providers in North America are interested in augmenting their service portfolio with unified communications services," said Bob Anderson, Mitel's vice-president, U.S. channel marketing. "However, in today's competitive environment, you can't rush to market with a user experience that might be less than optimal. Quite literally, a great user experience is the powerful competitive differentiator in the market today. With today's announcement, we're providing a program designed to ensure our solutions are optimized with the provider's cloud-based infrastructure." Mitel's Virtualized Datacenter Accreditation provides significant benefits for players in the cloud-based service ecosystem. It enables IaaS providers to offer differentiated services and the opportunity to add Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to their existing offerings, representing a new revenue opportunity. In addition, this program identifies and brands these IaaS providers for the many MSPs looking for partners on which they can rely on for a quality hosted UC service offering with a solid user experience. These MSPs can extend their service portfolio to better meet the needs of their Small- and Medium-sized Business (SMBs) customers. To receive the Virtualized Datacenter Accreditation, qualified IaaS and PaaS providers must achieve a number of technical certifications from both Mitel and VMware in addition to demonstrating technical competencies that support business continuity, high availability, disaster recovery, and redundancy – all key considerations for outsourcing enterprise grade physical and virtual facilities. "Our MSP customers have long wanted to offer hosted UC services, as they are keenly aware of the demand for these services among their SMB customer base," said Brian Hierholzer, president and CEO of Artisan Infrastructure, based in Austin, Texas. "By working with Mitel and its accreditation program, Artisan Infrastructure is providing a voice optimized network infrastructure to better serve our joint MSP customers and enable them to compete and succeed." The solution is based on the Mitel Freedom architecture, a single, cloud-ready software stream, running in a virtual environment on the VMware vSphere™ 4 platform. This includes complete support for VMware HA (High Availability), vMotion, DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), and SRM (Site Recovery Manager). The combined solution is designed to provide the highest levels of availability, scalability and flexibility critical for voice to be deployed in a cloud-based service environment. SMBs are particularly interested in hosted UC, as these increasingly sophisticated customers require enterprise-class communications to support growth, but do not always have the internal resources to purchase or configure their own UC solution in-house. With Mitel's UC solution delivered as a hosted service, it can help customers eliminate much of the technical complexity and up front capital investment barriers to acquiring benefits of UC. The Virtualized Datacenter Accreditation is currently available in the US. About Mitel Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL) is a global provider of business communications and collaboration software and services. Mitel's Freedom architecture provides the flexibility and simplicity organizations need to support today's dynamic work environment. Through a single cloud-ready software stream, Mitel delivers a powerful suite of advanced communications and collaboration capabilities that provides freedom from walled garden architectures and enables organizations to implement best-of-breed solutions on any network; extends the "in-office" experience anywhere, on any device; and offers choice of commercial options to fit business needs. For more information visit: http://www.mitel.com The Mitel Networks Corporation logo is available at //www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=8599 Mitel and the Mitel logo are registered trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. MITL-C CONTACT: Danielle McNeil (media), 613-592-2122 x4643, [email protected] Liam Rose (media), 415-992-3213, [email protected] Kevin Johnson (industry analysts), 613-592-2122 x6690, [email protected] Cynthia Hiponia (investor relations), 613-592-2122 x1992, [email protected] Source: Mitel Networks Corporation 2011 GlobeNewswire, Inc. |