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eaderboard
Aastra launches major platforms in Canada
Enterprise communications
supplier Aastra
Technologies, Concord,
ON, is launching early
this year in Canada its MX-ONE, a
full-featured PBX platform with
a complete suite of applications,
and its Solidus eCare, a system
specifically for call centres.
The MX-ONE is a standard based
platform that fully supports SIP and
is highly scalable. It is deployed
with thousands of customers
today globally with approximately
30 million lines installed. It goes
hand-in-hand with Solidus offering
state-of-the-art telephony solutions,
unified communications and all
elements related to contact centre
functionality and performance.
Aastra has a direct or indirect
presence in more than 100
countries. It has approximately 2400
employees worldwide with about
80 percent of revenue generated
internationally. Revenue for 2009 is
expected to be in the $850 million
range globally.
“We have had PBXs in our
portfolio for more than six years
now,” says Yves Laliberté, executive
vice-president of Aastra Telecom
Inc. “We never really entertained
seriously entering the Canadian
market for a number of reasons.”
One big reason was that Nortel
had been a major supplier of this
PBX technology and contact centre
applications, he says. It had a solid
grip on the major customer base and
also the channels.
“We saw more opportunities to
pursue international endeavours
as opposed to the market in our
own backyard. With Nortel filing
for bankruptcy protection early last
year, we realized this could be an
opportunity for us.”
The products Aastra plans to
launch in Canada were originally
developed by Ericsson. Aastra
acquired them when it purchased
an Ericsson division in May of 2008.
The acquisition included the global
technical support centre, the R&D
team, the customers, the channels,
the employees for MX-ONE and
Solidus eCare.
The PBX purchased from Ericsson
was a TDM version, says Laliberté.
Aastra turned it into an IP-based PBX
and renamed it MX-ONE. Ericsson
had a few installed in Canada, but
many more in the U.S.
“For some reason, maybe again to
do with Nortel, they [Ericsson] were
more successfull in penetrating the
U.S. and kind of gave up on Canada
a few years back. So we are going to
change that.”
Aastra introduced Solidus eCare
6.0 in January of 2009 and just
recently released version 7.0. It also
introduced two releases of the MX-
ONE, 3.2 earlier last year and 4.0
more recently.
“So each time we do a new
release we expand the functionality,
scalability, the interoperability
with other industry players,” says
Laliberté. “On average every eight to
nine months, we do a new release of
these standard based platforms.”
Aastra will use an indirect channel
model for distributing the products
in Canada. It is now looking for
and lining up partner resellers. It is
putting together specific training
and certification paths that leverage
existing skill sets of resellers, whether in
IT or traditional voice or other vendors.
“We certainly recognize that
training costs will be the large
investment made from a channel
partner and we want to make sure
we ease that burden to get them out
the door fast so they can start selling
the products and gain the financial
rewards,” says Laliberté. “We are
going to get to the market fast but
we are going to do it right.”
Mike Marshall, vice-president,
enterprise sales in Canada for Aastra,
is creating a support infrastructure
that evangelizes Aastra and provides
quality and qualified leads to channel
partners, which is what they expect.
“We have generated a lot
of interest from all sorts of
organizations, again both ITcentric
as well as voice-centric
organizations,” he says. “We expect
to lock in on our partner community
over the next couple of months.”
Resellers will be chosen on
the basis of regional and industry
vertical coverage, he says. A specific
number of resellers hasn’t been
determined, but the aim
is to have “few versus
many.” He anticipates
signing up between 10 to
12 channel partners.
A number of points
differentiate Solidus
from competitors,
says Laliberté. It is an
integrated, single server
system accommodating
all the major applications
for unified messaging, textmobile
convergence, and self
service. Users find it easier to
deploy, manage and maintain. It is
cost effective with less hardware
required and is more eco-friendly
with reduced power consumption
and footprint.
Solidus is particularly strong
in mobility, he says. Ericsson
engineers were fanatical
about leveraging mobility
and embedding it in the code and
architecture.
“You can increase the probability
of connecting the right people at the
right time with the right skills to the
people they need to be connected
with. So the mobility aspect provides
a lot of performance enhancement,
cost effectiveness and flexibility.”
He argues the self-service and
multimedia components of Solidus are
powerful and simple to deploy. The
self-service aspect allows for leveraging
everything from SMS to email to the
Web to increase productivity and
customer satisfaction. There are also
script-based tools to let users develop
their own IVR.
“You don’t need to pay expensive
consultants to come in and build
all your IVRs. You can do a lot of it
yourself for your self-services. As you
get feedback from customers you can
modify on the go what you have built.”
Solidus has the capability to do
call recording for compliances and
on-demand recording. For more
sophisticated functionality, there is
an interface for connecting any of
the leading call recording systems. At
this point, it does not have a speech
analytics module.
“We are focusing on some things
our customers have asked us for on
the platform,” says Laliberté. “The
Yves Laliberté, executive vicepresident
of Aastra Telecom, says
the Solidus mobility functionality
increases the probability of
connecting the right people at the
right time with the right skills to
those who need them.
open standard and API are part of this
and allow us to interconnect with all
the leading platforms for CRM, ERP,
and the various analytics required.”
What it does feature is the
concept of cradle-to-grave
reporting, he says. From first
interactions through to closing
transactions, regardless of the type
of interface or how many people
participated, users are able to
capture all the various interactions
with a customer, partner or supplier.
They can document and create
statistics on them.
Solidus is cost effective and
feasible for as few as five or 10 agents
upwards to thousands of agents,
he says. There is no trimmed down
version for small contact centres.
“It is the full-blown capacity.
But because it is an easy to learn
platform, it is feasible to deploy in a
smaller contact centre.”
In countries where it has been
installed, Solidus has been prevalent
in several vertical markets, he says.
see readerboard page 6
January / February 2010 contact management.ca 5