Mitel Targets SMBs With New Cloud-Based Contact Center Suite

The new AnyWare Cloud Contact Center is based on Mitel's Freedom architecture, which delivers UC applications via a cloud-based software stream. It also integrates with third-party CRM applications, including Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Mitel said.

Optimized for contact centers with 50 or fewer agents, Mitel AnyWare Cloud Contact Center bundles Mitel's communications portfolio with an Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system, or a set of routing technologies that direct incoming customer requests to the best-fit agent, or the agent with the most availability at the time.

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The cloud-based model also allows contact center agents to access Mitel's suite of applications from home or on the road. What's more, Mitel hosts the AnyWare Cloud Contact Center in its own data centers, and the solution can be fully managed by Mitel or its partners, a feature that the Ottawa-based company said bodes especially well for smaller-sized contact centers, where IT resources may be light.

Jon Brinton, president of NetSolutions, the U.S.-based Communications Service Provider division of Mitel, said AnyWare Cloud Contact Center presents an opportunity for partners to round out their broader contact center offerings and present their customers with a cloud-based alternative for contact center management and analytics.

"This release provides our resellers in the U.S. a new option to deploy Mitel technology to their customers. As a cloud-based deployment of Mitel Contact Center, the channel can now offer customers a solution they are already familiar with, [with] the added benefit and flexibility to select the delivery model the customer prefers," Brinton told CRN in an emailed statement. "We are committed to fulfilling our Mitel solution set in the cloud, in hybrid clouds and through traditional premise-based methods and this is another example of us moving ahead with that strategy."

The launch of Mitel's SMB-focused AnyWare Cloud Contact Center solution comes on the heels of contact center specialist Interactive Intelligence rolling out its own Communications-as-a-Service, called CaaS Small Center, for contact centers with 50 or fewer agents.

PUBLISHED APRIL 4, 2013