VMware and Mitel Bring Desktop Virtualization to the Contact Center
VMware and Mitel yesterday announced an integration of Mitel's Unified Contact Center Solution and Unified Communicator Advanced client software with VMware View, which allows customers to deliver modern virtual desktops and applications to end users as a managed service from the data center or the cloud.
With this new solution, contact center managers can deploy and manage agents anywhere in the world. It provides contact center agents with cloud-based access to contact center functionality as well as unified desktop and communications devices (soft phones or desk phones) wherever they might be.
The new integration "is completely decoupling all hardware dependencies from our products," says Alan Zurakowski, director of corporate business development and strategic alliances at Mitel. "Users can deploy our solutions—whether VoIP, unified communications, or contact center—in a virtual contact center environment."
One of the advantages of these solutions, according to Zurakowski, is that nothing is stored on site. "The biggest benefit is that everything is stored remotely and can be accessed from anywhere," he says. "The capital expense is really reduced, but we still give [contact center managers] the control that they want over the applications."
Zurakowski says VMWare's virtual technologies are widely used in the financial services, healthcare, government, and education verticals, but the new integrated applications could really be tied to any industry. Mitel, he adds, is very focused on the North American small and midsized business market, "so, from a go-to-market perspective, that's where we are going to focus."
Prior to yesterday's official launch, the integrated products had been available as prototypes to a few select customers since August.
"We chose Mitel specifically because they were the only vendor we evaluated that could integrate with our VMware View-based virtual environment," said Russ Johnson, president of Fuse Networks, in a statement "The flexibility of Mitel's open UC architecture, combined with VMware's leading virtualization solutions, gave us a consolidated communications infrastructure that we could manage like any other virtual application."
"These latest integrations of Mitel solutions with VMware View further advance our vision to deliver highly secure, centrally managed virtual desktops with advanced multimedia capability," said Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of end user computing at VMware, in a statement. "Mitel has once again demonstrated the flexibility of its open, single software stream Freedom architecture."