The UC news highlights continue today with new VoIP phones released
separately by Mitel, ShoreTel, and snom—along with an acquisition by
Genesys designed to enhance its contact center portfolio.
Mitel’s 6800i series of IP business phones,
launched at the Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando, FL, are
designed to offer the broadest possible interoperability and support for
both on-premise and hosted services. The new SIP phone series comes
from Mitel's recent merger with Aastra, building on the 6700i series
feature set, with adding high-resolution color displays and GigE
interfaces for clearer image and video support. According to a statement
by Dave Johnson, marketing manager for Business Communications at
Mitel, “Adding the 6800i series to [the Mitel] portfolio further expands
customer choice with highly interoperable phones that are designed to
work with all of the world's leading IP call platforms." The phones will begin shipping worldwide through Mitel partners starting next month.
ShoreTel also announced it is shipping the ShoreTel
400 series IP phones for ShoreTel Sky, expanding the company’s UCaaS
solutions portfolio. The 400 series IP phones for ShoreTel Sky are
designed to deliver seamless integration with all ShoreTel cloud
applications for an enhanced user experience. The SIP-based ShoreTel 400
series phones for ShoreTel Sky are available in three models – IP480,
IP480G, and IP485G – ranging from a basic phone to a more advanced
backlit, color display phone for executives.
And in a third announcement, snom technology
announced at Enterprise Connect 2014 that its snom UC edition Lync
qualified phones can leverage Lync server’s native administration
interface for easy device management directly from the Lync server.
According to a statement from Michael Knieling, COO of snom, the “snom
UC edition phones can be managed natively via the Lync Server without
the need for additional servers or provisioning tools.” Because
this can all be done directly via the Lync server administration
interface the cost and complexity of additional network infrastructure,
training and maintenance are reduced.
In other news, Genesys announced that it has
acquired the assets of the Solariat business, a social customer care and
analytics platform company. Genesys intends to use the acquisition to
extend its social media engagement capabilities. Commenting is a
statement on the acquisition, Paul Segre President and Chief Executive
Officer, Genesys said, “Combining Solariat’s patented social analytics
technology with the Genesys Customer Engagement Platform will give
Genesys customers a powerful new tool to deliver accurate and consistent
answers across all customer touch points including social media.”
