Metropolitan launches Mitel’s latest innovations in enterprise communications

Mitel showcased its seamless communications technology which has revolutionised the way enterprises and individuals do business and stay in touch around the world, at a recent launch organised by Metropolitan Communications Ltd. 

The launch introduced the latest innovations in enterprise communications where the smart phone would also offer the functionality of the land phone and where businesses can switch across devices and environments without any hindrance to their conversations.

Speaking at the launch, Metropolitan Communications Managing Director Roshan Tissera said that over the years of providing communications solutions to Sri Lanka, communications sector has seen many changes, and during this time at no stage did any of its customers had to dispose their initial investments due to obsolescence but continued to upgrade their existing platforms to avail themselves of the latest technological advancements from TDM, to IP and Hybrid platforms.

Tissera mentioned of the Metropolitan’s 36 Years of experience in the industry where their journey commenced with Ericsson Enterprise which was subsequently sold to Aastra Technologies, and the subsequent Mitel’s merger with Aastra in 2014 brought over 60 million customers worldwide that propelled Mitel in having one of the largest global foot prints in the industry.  

“Mitel powers two billion connections per day while 60 million users depend on Mitel for connectivity. When it comes to solutions Mitel is the only company that is included in all five quadrants of Gartner Report in Enterprise Telephony with leadership position in unified communications and corporate telephony,” said Marcus Junthe, Head of Product Management Mitel for Middle and Africa.

Mitel had just concluded a sale which could be termed as one of the largest providing 600,000 user connectivity throughout Europe for one of largest automobile manufacturers. Mitel’s technological developments in fixed to mobile convergence, collaboration, call centers and hospitality solutions were shared at the launch.

“Unified collaboration forms the bridge that allows employees to participate in a conference through voice, video, or web by connecting through any smart device such as a phone, or tab with the ability to share documents from any ware. What sets the Mitel solution apart its ability to provide constant voice clarity during the conference,” Ian Bevington, Marketing Manager of Mitel for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He mentioned specifically about the worldwide change in enterprise communication from fixed to mobile.  The latest technology development in mobility is bringing in a new dimension to the roving worker in an organisation. What this means is that you no longer have to provide a fixed extension to an employee any more as the mobile phone will function as the fixed phone with complete desktop functionality.  This allows employees to be connected to your corporate communication network from anywhere round the world with complete access to the company directory and, intranet through your smart Device.  Therefore you only need to know the extension number of the employee to contact him from anywhere and vice versa. Contacts centres now have to incorporate the latest digital methodology of communications to cater to the new generation.  This means communication through web chats, social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. Mitel’s new contact centre solutions are geared to handle the new digital communication methods. 

In Sri Lanka, Metropolitan Group Chief Technology Officer Anil Gunawardana explained how Mobitel developed their contact centre solution where Metropolitan installed an Auto Call Distribution system (ACD) based on Ericsson BP 250 platform as far back as 1993 but with the launch of Mobitel’s GSM services the system was upgraded to a fully-fledged contact centre to meet the growing customer subscriber base and functionality. Today, the contact centre runs on a fully IP based in house virtual cloud environment with 235 agents answering calls from different parts of the country. 

Mitel’s latest hospitality suite enables the telephone system to seamlessly integrate to the property management system of the hotel thus providing features and functionality that will enrich guest experience. Anantara Peace Heaven Tangalle hotel required a solution that ensured a guest experience at the highest level. The solution entailed fibre connectivity to the rooms with the GPOND Technology providing Voice, Wi-Fi and IP TV services from a single device. This technology was used for the first time in Sri Lanka in an enterprise environment and the total turnkey solution provided by Metropolitan included voice, data, surveillance and digital piped music on a converged IP platform. Gunawardene also shared the case of a very large government organisation having over 500 locations island-wide requiring a cost-effective corporate communications solution. Metropolitan teamed up with a leading service provider to implement an innovative fixed and mobile solution. Currently, there over 3,000 users with of which 1,000 are mobile. The organisation hopes to grow the mobile users to 10,000 in the near future which would result in it having the largest mobile users in Asia.

Pix by Daminda Harsha Perera