Unified Communications (UC) Is Brought By Mitel-Itec To Mid-Market.

Johannesburg, 3 June 2009 - Mitel, a leading provider of IP business communications solutions, has partnered with Itec South Africa in anticipation of huge growth in the local IP telephony market. Both companies believe IP telephony will dominate developments in the telecoms sector over the next 18 months.

In terms of the agreement, Itec has been named an accredited Mitel distributor for South Africa.

“The partnership will enable Mitel to significantly expand its route to market as it allows us to take advantage of Itec's well-established national footprint,” says Andy Bull, director at Mitel. “There are natural vertical and horizontal synergies between our two companies; we help people respond to real world business challenges with communication solutions that drive productivity, improve performance and reduce costs.”

Frank Mullen, chief operating officer of Itec Enterprise Solutions, says the partnership, which is aimed at the medium enterprise segment, forms part of the group's ongoing strategy to join forces with companies which products complement its own. “Mitel is a leader in unified communications, integrated business applications and research and development,” he says. “This agreement enables us to offer real value-added solutions to our clients, and means we can leverage Mitel's expertise in IP telephony.”

IP telephony uses the Internet's packet-switched connections to exchange information that has traditionally been carried over the telephone network. Calls travel as packets of data on shared lines, which enable companies to lower telecoms costs as they no longer pay Telkom fees.

This aggregation of voice, video and data onto a single IP-based network, known as unified communications, encompasses all aspects of an organisation's communication requirements, including e-mail, SMS, fax, voice and video.

“It combines multiple IT capabilities, enabling an efficient approach to communicating,” says Bull. “It's a level of location-independent communication, which means that work is where you are, not where your office is.”

Among the benefits of unified communications are lowered costs, improved employee efficiency and productivity, enhanced responsiveness to customers, suppliers and partners, and streamlined IT management, along with lower total cost of ownership.

One of the flagship products to be distributed by Itec is the Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP). It provides organisations with a highly scalable, feature-rich communications system designed to support businesses of all sizes. The 3300 ICP offers enterprise IP-PBX capability, as well as embedded applications, including standard unified messaging, auto-attendant, ACD and wireless.

It operates across virtually any LAN/WAN infrastructure, and provides seamless IP networking. It also gives companies the opportunity to IP-enable their legacy PBXes so that they can protect their existing investments while still deriving all the benefits of a converged infrastructure.

At user level, the 3300 ICP supports a large range of desktop devices, including entry-level IP phones, Web-enabled IP devices, wireless handsets, and full-duplex IP audio conference units. It also supports applications, including multimedia collaboration, mobility, customer relationship management and unified messaging.