Time and again, questions have been asked regarding Mitel’s future as competition intensifies in the collaboration segment. The company made a strong statement by announcing its return to profitability in March and Richard McBee, chief executive officer made it clear that Mitel is “not for sale”.
And now, Mitel is now planning to disrupt the personal collaboration segment with its new offering – the Mitel UC360 Collaboration Point, an innovative, first-of-its-kind device for the personal office meeting space. Priced at less than $2,000, Mitel claims the UC360 will fill the gap between an expensive telepresence conference room and a desktop video device.
The company is pitching the Mitel U360 as an “all-in-one multimedia collaboration appliance combines multi-party HD video and audio with in-room presentation display and document sharing for remote participants at a disruptive price point.” It supports multiparty HD video (up to four participants) and can connect directly to a projector without requiring a computer. Mitel says it conceptualized the UC360 in response to customer and market demand for easier, more cost-effective tools in the personal collaboration segment.
“Mitel UC360 setup is a breeze, which makes for quick and easy deployment wherever they are needed,” said Rick DeClerk, Manager, Network Communications, Central Technology Services. “With this kind of solution for the personal office meeting space, collaboration will happen anytime we are ready — not just when a conference room is available.”
Last month, Cisco published a study which suggested that despite concerns over corporate security, BYOD is gaining momentum in the enterprise. Last week, ShoreTel’s announced its Mobile UC offering to capitalize on the BYOD momentum and allow customers to use a single, converged device for both business and personal communications. Cisco itself recently updated WebEx to pitch it as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering targeted at small businesses, teleworkers, mobile workers, startups and small offices. With UC360, Mitel too would be hoping to make the most of prevalence of personal mobile devices in the workplace.
With an aggressive price point and Mitel’s marketing prowess in play, the UC 360 may well be the disruptive solution that beings “full multimedia collaboration to the masses.”
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Written by: Gaurav Kheterpal. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.comby:RSS,Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.
