Mitel Now Virtualizing InfrastructureMitel Now Virtualizing Infrastructure

The new release aims to remove a potential barrier to UC adoption--the need to upgrade the underlying infrastructure that supports UC.

Mitel has been working with VMware for several years and positions its UC integration with VMware as a key market differentiator. The two companies have jointly announced several UC/virtualization firsts including support of call processing on a VMware virtual server and softphones on VMware's VDI solution.

The company offers its UC products as an appliance, software, and as a hosted service. The software option gets implemented on customer "servers" which could be physical or virtual, and on or off site. To simplify the journey to virtualization, Mitel this week announced a new option: Mitel AnyWare Virtual Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Mitel division NetSolutions (MNS) announced general availability of AnyWare IaaS at Interop in Las Vegas. The technology was previewed at Enterprise Connect 2012 in March.

Jon Brinton, president of Mitel NetSolutions (MNS) said, "Until now, companies interested in deploying real-time communication technologies like voice or video had to invest in new infrastructure to support the Quality of Service required for enterprise collaboration." The new service provides a SAS70-certified virtual Private Data Center configured to support real-time UC applications.

The solution is aimed at organizations that are attracted to virtualization, but that haven't yet made the necessary investments in the data center. It directly competes with other VMware data center services, but it is optimized for Mitel UC. Jamie Vandermeuse, director of Operations at M2 Logistics Inc. piloted the new service and said, "We evaluated other cloud-based UCC services, but they don't have the rich feature set and flexibility we required. What we really needed was a way to connect our offices and customers in a unique and meaningful way without losing the options and features that a premise-based model would offer."

Mitel was already offering SaaS under the Mitel AnyWare brand via MNS, and now customers have the option of owning their licenses, configuration, and implementation within the Mitel hosted cloud infrastructure. The implementation can be combined with Mitel's SaaS or premises based solutions. Brinton said the cloud service offers customers the same level of functionality as if the applications were in the customer's own data center.

The service is optimized to host the Mitel products exceeding Mitel's recommended specifications. It also and includes management tools for channel partners and their customers. MNS also offers bundled circuit services including MPLS, SIP trunking, and mobile services.

The move aligns with Mitel's ongoing commitment and alliance with VMware and additionally provides the company a new complementary revenue stream.