Tag Archive for: Business Phones

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Mitel Support Q&A Regarding its Purchase of Toshiba

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With Toshiba’s surprise exit from the telecom market, Mitel has stepped in, acquiring Toshiba Telecom’s assets and support obligations. The deal has been completed. To keep you informed on Mitel’s obligations, here are answers to some frequently asked questions.

Watch the video: Mitel VP Mike Conlon talks about the Toshiba acquisition

What you need to know now…

1. Who is Mitel?
Mitel is a global market leader in UC and collaboration solutions, serving more than 60 million business users in more than 100 countries. Mitel supports the communication needs of the smallest business to the largest enterprises – both in the cloud and on premises.

2. What exactly has Mitel acquired from Toshiba?
Mitel acquired certain assets, inventory, and support obligations from Toshiba’s unified communications business, specifically:

  • IPedge platform (premises-based IP PBX and IP phones)
  • Strata CIX communications platform (digital hybrid solution)
  • VIPedge platform (cloud version of IPedge)
  • Associated peripherals and applications

The transaction also includes an agreement to provide product and service continuity. To accomplish this, a number of key Toshiba sales, support, and R&D employees have joined Mitel to serve existing Toshiba customers and partners.

3. What changes should customers expect and when?
It is business as usual for Toshiba customers and partners. Continue to follow the same processes as before with respect to service, support, and fulfillment for Toshiba products.

Any changes to products, programs, or processes resulting from the acquisition will be communicated to you by PhoneAmerica well in advance.

4. Are my current contracts with Toshiba still valid?
Yes, contracts will remain valid. Mitel is now responsible for fulfilling all contracts immediately.

5. Will my warranties still be in effect?
Yes, and this includes the SUS (Software Upgrade and Support) plan. And Mitel is now accepting extended warranties.

6. Will any service quality/policies change?
No. Mitel is as committed as Toshiba in delivering quality products and services to its partners and customers. You can expect the same or better quality of support from Mitel.

7. Will Toshiba inventory levels remain the same?
Inventory levels fluctuate with all businesses; however, Mitel is confident it can ensure continuity of supply for the foreseeable future.

8. Will quotes I received on Toshiba solutions still be honored?
Yes, if they are backed by Toshiba or an accredited partner.

Going forward…

As a Toshiba customer, why should you consider staying with PhoneAmerica and Mitel for the long term?
Mitel is enabling Toshiba customers to not only extend the life of their products but also to make a graceful transition to next-generation technologies, with access to Mitel’s entire line of premises, hybrid, and cloud-based platforms and applications.

As a major global player in the unified communications and collaboration industry, Mitel is a well-established, stable business. The company has a strong vision, mission, and customer-first focus, and it is investing heavily in technology for the future with new products and technologies in the pipeline.

As you assess your next steps, we’re confident you’ll want to continue to work with PhoneAmerica. Our team has a proven reputation for high performance and decades of stability. Together, PhoneAmerica and Mitel will ensure your Toshiba system is supported now and in the future.

Please contact us today if you have any questions: (610) 296-2850 or creimel@phoneam.com.

 

Business Phones and Mobile Networks

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The use of the Internet for business phones is quite accepted and common. It is slowly gaining acceptance across all businesses. Though pioneered by large companies that saw an immediate cut in expenditures, small and medium businesses have now latched on and are using it to increase their business. Business phones are going to a face a huge competition in terms of Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a system where the computing devices are interrelated with unique identifiers. Data can be transferred through them without the requirement of human to computer or human to human interaction. The end device in an IoT network can be a farm animal that has a biochip installed in it, a person with an implanted heart monitor, or even an automobile that has built in sensors in it. The thing will become a ‘thing’ in IoT when an IP address is assigned to it.

As IoT gains usage, there will be innovative ideas for providing services to different spheres of businesses in addition to business phones. The commercial models, that are emerging from IoT promise to make exponential growth in the mobile network. There will be innovation in efficiency of networks, service delivery, and other factors.

IoT will change the system in the sense that mobile phones will not primarily be used for communication. As the use cases will be varied, they will pose a challenge to the networks to make their system more efficient, agile and automated.

Starting Point

With IoT in full operation, this world will be better connected and networks have to decide their role in it. Obviously their operating framework and position in the market will be the key players. The carriers will need to focus on the network developers, service enablers and service creators.

The main focus will be on the core connectivity of the system where service level of the networks must be managed efficiently. The service enablers will create such platforms on which new services can be created. And, of course, the responsibility of the service creators will be to control the entire connectivity and the system. Mobile networks will be the core point in all these.

Networks Evolution & Business Phones

As already mentioned, just like mobile business phones are cases for broadband, there will be numerous cases for IoT. Obviously cellular will be an attractive operating base for it, as cellular is licensed spectrum in contrast to LPWAN that is an unlicensed spectrum.

To support these change it is necessary that developments are sought after in Mobile networks too. Nobody knows which case will be chosen by which industry for their communication when IoT becomes prevalent in almost every industry. The main focus of cellular technology has been on human to machine consumption. With IoT use cases, this will change and it will require fresh performance in terms of everything – cost, security, capacity, latency, reliability, uptime, etc.

Presently in the US, assuming every human being is a using a cellular device, we have some 320 million mobile connections. Add some 250 more of existing IoT devices. These numbers will pale into oblivion when some billion or more devices get connected in the next few years. Image ten or more devices for every human being, and we are talking in the range of 3-4 billion devices being connected. At least half of these will be connected through mobile networks.

With time, there will be multiple layers of technology. The challenge that has to be met by the networks is to meet this technological advancement

The Networks Evolution

Presently, the networks are evolving from GSM to LTE. The gap between them is covered by 3GPP – REL 1. With EC-GSM, it will be possible to support cases that have deep indoor coverage and also long battery life. These will be typically useful in smart buildings, smart meters and agricultural sector where small amount of data will be transferred to the network. For dealing with bigger amount of data there will be LTE-M.

With IoT, the mobile network providers are also keen to develop their system and be a part of this revolution. By 2020 5G spectrum will be there to support all these devices that will be operating on IoT technology.

About PhoneAM

At Phone America, we have the knowledge and experience to prepare a blueprint for your shift to VoIP. Call us today and we will guide you through the whole process.

Phone America Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecom systems for small and large businesses. We serve as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE.

Small Business Should Use VoIP

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VoIP Telephone Wilmington DECompetition in the market is compelling several businesses into trying out several innovative business processes making changes to the existing ones. This has led to the use of latest communication systems like VoIP.

Voice over Internet Protocol is the a technology that holds the potential of bringing a sea change in enterprise communication. In order to stay in the market and compete with the giants, smaller businesses can leverage the communication power of VoIP to at level the playing ground. Investments on the appropriate business phone systems can help smaller companies reap huge dividends in the coming years.

Businesses across the globe are switching to VoIP as it is definitely the future of enterprise communication. One of the recent surveys revealed that about 41% of the smaller businesses across the world are migrating to the VoIP systems as that facilitates faster and effective communications. The businesses that have not yet shifted to VoIP are in the process of shifting and the day is not far when the traditional phone lines will be completely replaced by VoIP. So what special features or advantages are being offered by VoIP that companies are queuing up for adopting it?

Here are some of the most compelling reasons behind making a switch to VoIP.

VoIP Has Unbeatable Features

Smaller companies often face the problem of projecting a very professional image in front of their customers. The reason behind this is the lack of capital investments on getting swanky commercial spaces for office or hiring adequate workforce for handling customers. Now, a switch to VoIP helps them to establish a state-of-the-art communication system at their offices. This automatically presents a very professional image to the customers who call up the office. Thus, even the smallest business in the city can project a very professional image to its customers. There are several features like automatic call routing, call attendant, music on hold etc. that creates the best possible process to handle calls. Besides this you can even integrate the VoIP with existing CRM and email systems that enable effective and efficient call handling.

VoIP Provides Substantial Savings

VoIP can help the smaller companies save thousands of dollars annually that they otherwise would spend on paying hefty telephone bills. Instead they can invest the money on core business areas like marketing and production. This would help the companies to pull in the right amount of fund for core business activities and not spend unnecessarily on communication systems. Organizations will never have to pay for multiple lines and they can even make free calls within the network.

VoIP Enables Enhanced Productivity

The smaller organizations will be better placed by cutting down the losses they usually incurred for maintaining the legacy systems. VoIP telephony solution will free up the resources (both monetary as well as human) to be used for more productive business purpose. Enhanced productivity will lead to greater profits, which would immensely help in the organization’s growth.

Enables Improvement In Service

The switch to VoIP will definitely make it easier for you to provide customer support. You will able to use the latest telephony features like Find Me/Follow Me and video conferencing to provide real time support and service to your customers. This will give rise to a huge number of satisfied customers.

There are several other benefits which can be realized after switching to VoIP and SMBs will be able to create an efficient communication solution to handle all types of business communication with ease.

About PhoneAM

At PhoneAM, we have the knowledge and experience to prepare a blueprint for your shift to VoIP. Call us today and we will guide you through the whole process.

PhoneAmerica Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecommunication systems for small and large business environments. A total service company, PhoneAmerica serves as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Please call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE.

Privacy vs Security in the Cloud

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Security vs PrivacyThe rising popularity of cloud in the last few years has also thrown up some uncomfortable questions, both for the service providers as well as users. The primary concern of cloud service providers as well as users has been privacy and security in the cloud. It would be an understatement to say that it was predicted in the early days of the cloud that it could be easily abused by any of the cybercriminals around the world.

Today, the growing cases of cloud hacks have just made those prophecies true. Things are not going to get any better in the coming years because popular services like Dropbox and Sendspace have been abused by many people to host their illegitimate payload.

The Need for Privacy

People nowadays are more concerned about data privacy and they do not want to see their personal data being scrutinized by government agencies or monetized by the cloud data providers. For instance, when we upload our files on cloud storage, we do not want the service providers to search each and every file. We want such a system where customer’s data would be completely encoded and incomprehensible to the service provider. The primary clash is between privacy and security – we want to have the cake as well as eat it!

The Additional Cost of Privacy

In order to put things in perspective we will take up a very popular scenario:  There is a service provider who wants to ensure that their service is not being used by perpetrators for hosting malware. Thus, the service provider would have to use solutions like sandbox testing, file scanning etc. in order to test all the files that were uploaded. The provider will have to incur extra costs for this but at the same time, users can complain about the breach in data privacy, which can pretty much spoil goodwill and reputation of the company.

Where to Encrypt

On the other hand, if the service provider opts for private storage where the encryption is carried out on user devices, no one at the service provider’s end will have any idea about the data being stored.  Now, such a service is highly vulnerable for being used for malicious purposes by cybercriminals. Thus, both the legitimate users as well as the illegitimate users will be shielded from any type of data scrutiny. Both the approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages.

In such a precarious environment, service providers will have to strike a balance between data privacy and security and offer a solution that suits both their business model as well as security. Thus, no matter how hard a service provider tries a certain level of abuse will still remain and this can be termed as an inevitable cost which has to be incurred for doing business.

Your Options

What options does the user have? Well, I would have to reiterate that abuse cannot be completely stopped; however, precautions can be taken by both the users as well as their service providers.  Users will have to take up the responsibility of data security and they cannot shrug it off just because the vendor chose to do otherwise. Users will have to strategize and find solutions for the safekeeping of data on the cloud and this can’t be completely handed over to the cloud service providers. There are pros and cons of using cloud storage and related services – you are the best person to judge because there is no one better than you who knows the importance of security for your business.

About PhoneAM

At PhoneAM, we have the knowledge and experience to prepare a blueprint for your shift to VoIP. Call us today and we will guide you through the whole process.

PhoneAmerica Corporation is a leading supplier of advanced telecommunication systems for small and large business environments. A total service company, PhoneAmerica serves as a single point of contact for today’s growing communication needs, offering a wide range of telephone equipment, wiring, surveillance systems, telephone cost accounting systems, and voice processing systems.

Please call (800) 836-3601 for a free evaluation of your current system and the system you will need to carry your business into the FUTURE