Anything goes with Integrated

Disbury said with Integrated team members regularly on the move, life has been made easier by Mitel’s Your Assistant Lite, a desktop interface that places and answers all phone calls.

“We have now integrated our phone system with our Windows applications, implemented simplified dialling, and have an automatic phone directory for the whole company,” said Disbury. “Team members can even make and receive work phone calls from their laptops, wherever they might be working.”
Disbury said it is important that Integrated was adopting a reliable offering such as Mitel’s due to the high number of offices it has distributed across Australia.

“At the moment we are just getting everything on to a standardised platform and we are also looking at a Vista upgrade, but will hold off at first and let other people make the mistakes first,” added Disbury.

Lyndon Croot, sales manager of Anything Telephones, said: “We are providing IP networking between Integrated’s sites and the plan is that Integrated is after more manageability of its network, which the Mitel offering can provide.”

Croot said Integrated will be able to plug a handset into its LAN anywhere and gain access, and having a common Mitel platform will make life easier for Integrated as it scales up as a firm.

“The next step for Integrated will be deploying soft phones on laptops so
employees have a road warrior situation and we will be trialling this very shortly. ”

Croot said the Mitel product is mature and reliable, which is a key factor as Anything feels conformable selling Mitel to customers as it’s assured it is going to work.

“We have been working with Mitel for 18 months and are actively selling its offering now. In that time Mitel has become 70 per cent of our revenue. We also work with NEC and Panasonic,” said Croot.

“VoIP is taking off in Australia. It looks and operates like traditional telephony and end-users are interested in additional desktop applications. End-users can really see the benefits of the product.”

Croot added that no vertical in particular has been adopting VoIP as the technology applies itself across the board as it is no longer much more expensive than traditional telephony.

Anything is using the Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) for the deployment. According to Mitel, the platform is a communications system designed to support businesses from 10 to 65,000 users.

The 3300 ICP aims to provide IP networking and allows organisations to move toward a converged network, incorporating VoIP, unified messaging and video and audio conferencing.

“We always use the 3330 platform as it scales up so well,” Gwilym Funnell, managing director for Mitel Australia, told CRN.
“Most IP telephony projects are for remote site firms and one of the strengths of the 3330 is that it can provide this across all of the firms’ offices,” he said.

Funnell said with the 3330 platform costs remain low, but users still get the distributed offering they require.

“Mitel’s IP solutions make it easy for users to integrate their phone system with everyday software applications.,” he said.
“Mitel has been in Australia for four years and has built a purely indirect model. We have a two-tier model with two distributors and around 90 resellers across Australia,” said Funnell.

Funnell said Mitel still plans to cover gaps in its channel set-up, with more coverage in certain verticals and skill sets.

“The benefit of IP is that you can keep layering on new applications. Integrated Group can now link sites, every user has the same features wherever they are so they can hot desk, and they can also collaborate documents too.”

On the Australian VoIP adoption debate, Funnel said the fact Mitel has 90 active channels across Australia is testimony to the strong adoption rate in the region.

“We are finding that every vertical is adopting IP telephony. If a firm’s IT manager understands it, they will adopt it,” added Funnell.

The role of resellers such as Anything will be pivotal in the rate of VoIP adoption in Australia. The channel is the ‘feet on the street’ for new waves of technology. Integrated has an established relationship with Anything, which gave the firm the confidence to commit to such a large-scale investment.

Resellers have the established end-user relationships and need to have the ability to source the correct knowledge to educate end-users on the benefits of migrating their business to a VoIP environment.

As with a lot of emerging technology, end-users have preconceptions about VoIP, and it is resellers’ role to strip these away.

It is likely we have barely made the opera’s interval drinks in terms of widespread VoIP adoption by end-users, but the mind-set of firms such as Integrated is a huge step forward for the technology.