OTTAWA, April 19, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mitel® (Nasdaq:MITL), a leading provider of unified communications software solutions, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named Mitel Contact Center 6.0 as a Customer Interaction Solutions 2011 Product of the Year Award. Customer Interaction Solutions magazine is the leading publication covering CRM, call centers and teleservices since 1982.

Based on Mitel’s Freedom Architecture, Contact Center 6.0 helps IT departments to reduce costs, while extending in-office functionality to users in any location with an Internet connection. Contact Center 6.0 can also be integrated in a VMware View-based virtual environment, enabling contact center managers to deploy both contact center and communications applications as a single unified solution in a virtual desktop environment, saving significant capital costs and centralizing management and control.

“We’re honored to be recognized for this award, and would like to extend gratitude to our partner, prairieFyre, for submitting our Contact Center 6.0 solution for consideration,” said Stephen Beamish, vice president of Corporate Marketing and Business Development. “Our contact center customers have consistently pushed for more flexibility in terms of managing their agents and integration capabilities with virtualized technologies of all kinds. With Contact Center 6.0, they now have that flexibility.”

“Mitel was selected to receive a 2011 Product of the Year Award for its achievement in advancing CRM, contact center and call center technologies. Contact Center 6.0 has demonstrated excellence as well as provided ROI for the companies that use it,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has been recognizing innovative companies for 14 years and Mitel has earned its place with this distinguished honor.” 

The 14^th Annual Product of the Year Award winners are published in the January/February 2012 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, www.cismag.com. 

For more information about the Customer Interaction Solutions’ 2011 Product of the Year Awards or any of the TMC media properties, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About Mitel

Mitel Networks (Nasdaq:MITL) is a global provider of business communications solutions and services, consisting of unified communications and collaboration software applications, IP telephony platforms, mobility applications and managed and network services. Mitel enables businesses of all sizes to move beyond basic fixed telephony tools toward integrated multi-media collaboration solutions, accessible from anywhere, helping to improve performance, gain competitive advantage, and reduce costs. Mitel’s global headquarters are in Ottawa, Canada, US headquarters are in Chandler, Arizona and EMEA headquarters are in Caldicot, UK, with offices, partners, and resellers worldwide. For more information visit: http://www.mitel.com

Mitel and the Mitel logo are registered trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation. 

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The Mitel Networks Corporation logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=8599

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About INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine

INTERNET TELEPHONY has been the IP Communications Authority since 1998™. Beginning with the first issue in February of 1998, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been providing unbiased views of the complicated converged communications space. INTERNET TELEPHONY offers rich content from solutions-focused editorial content to reviews on products and services from TMC Labs. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine reaches more than 225,000 readers, including pass-along readers. For more information, please visit www.itmag.com.

About TMC 

TMC, celebrating their 40th Anniversary in 2012, is a global, integrated media company that helps clients build communities in print, in person, and online. TMC publishes the Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Next Gen Mobility and Cloud Computing (formerly InfoTECH Spotlight) magazines. TMCnet.com, which is read by two million unique visitors each month, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. TMC is the producer of ITEXPO, the world’s leading B2B communications event. In addition, TMC runs multiple industry events: Mobility Tech Conference & Expo; M2M Evolution; Cloud Communications Expo; SIP Tutorial 2.0:Bringing SIP to the Web; Business Video Expo; Regulatory 2.0 Workshop; DevCon5; HTML5 Summit; CVx; AstriCon; StartupCamp; MSPAlliance MSPWorld and more. Visit TMC Events for a complete listing and further information.

For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

News Provided by Acquire Media

OTTAWA, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–prairieFyre Software, a global leader in delivering business communication solutions for enterprise telephony, call center, and business process automation, announced today that it has passed all tests required to become a qualified contact center solution provider for Microsoft Lync 2010.

The Microsoft Lync ISV Qualification Program is for Microsoft Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that have built solutions on top of Microsoft Lync 2010. The qualification program ensures that customers have seamless experiences with setup, support, and use of qualified telephony infrastructures and services with Microsoft’s unified communications software, including Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

“Microsoft is excited that prairieFyre Software’s Contact Center for Microsoft Lync has successfully completed the Microsoft Lync ISV Qualification Program,” said BJ Haberkorn, group product marketing manager at Microsoft Corp. “Our mutual customers can now take advantage of prairieFyre’s innovative software-based approach to the contact center with the confidence that independent third-party testing provides.”

Qualification testing was focused on the following areas: basic installation and operation, hardware and software performance monitoring, integration integrity, feature confirmation, phone integration, remote agent support, routing, instant messaging, and silent monitor/whisper/barge functionality. prairieFyre’s Contact Center for Microsoft Lync solution successfully passed all of the required tests to become certified for the Microsoft Lync ISV Qualification.

“We are proud to provide our channel partners and dealers with a qualified contact center solution for Microsoft Lync,” said Todd Simons, Vice President of Business Development at prairieFyre Software. “Our Contact Center for Microsoft Lync has been winning awards since it became generally available, but it is this qualification from Microsoft that validates our heavy investment in Lync 2010 over the last two years.”

prairieFyre’s Contact Center for Microsoft Lync uses the voice telephony and unified communications capabilities of Lync 2010 and combines them with full-featured Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) and a modular suite of agent, supervisor, and management applications. On the desktop, agents use the prairieFyre Ignite toolbar which docks to the Lync 2010 client and provides an ACD soft phone with enterprise presence and feature-rich tabs containing real-time contact center information. With its tight interoperation with Lync and other back office Microsoft platforms like Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory, businesses are realizing a much quicker Return on Investment and IT administrators benefit from a familiar, unified infrastructure.

About prairieFyre Software

prairieFyre Software has deployed contact center solutions to over 8,000 customers in over 70 countries worldwide. They have leveraged this experience to create an affordable yet feature-rich solution that is ideal for enterprises looking for a contact center designed to work with Lync Server 2010.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

Contacts

prairieFyre Software
Todd Simons, 613-599-0045 ext. 1197
Vice President, Business Development
tsimons@prairiefyre.com

LAS VEGAS, Feb. 13, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Today at the VMware® Partner Exchange 2012, VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) and Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL) unveiled the integration of Mitel’s Contact Center Solution for VMware View™, which can enable contact center managers to deploy and manage agents anywhere in the world, while empowering the center to lower costs. This solution provides contact center agents with cloud-based access to contact center functionality as well as a unified desktop and communications device (soft phone or desk phone) wherever they may be.

In addition, Mitel announced the availability of Mitel’s virtualized Unified Communicator® (UC) Advanced client software for VMware View. Additional information on both solutions can be found at this link: http://www.mitel.com/solutions/virtualization/virtual-desktop-solutions/VirtualDesktop

“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. “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.”

Desktop virtualization using VMware View decouples desktop components from physical devices and delivers them as a managed service from a centralized location, such as the data center or from the cloud. By centrally managing the desktops, applications and user data in the data center, organizations can benefit from improved manageability and control. When used in conjunction with Mitel’s Contact Center Solution, contact center and communications applications can be deployed as a single unified solution in a virtual desktop environment, enabling IT departments to reduce costs, while also extending their desktop and mobile environment to anywhere an end-user has an Internet connection.

For the contact center manager, this can allow for greater flexibility when bringing on additional agents during times of peak capacity, while maintaining centralized control over each agent. IT managers can reap similar cost and control benefits, while delivering their end-users a rich, consistent and high-performance desktop experience to any qualified device — including tablets and smartphones — whether in the office or on the go.

“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, End-User Computing, VMware. “Mitel has once again demonstrated the flexibility of its open, single software stream Freedom architecture.”

“Our contact center customers have consistently pushed for more flexibility in terms of managing their agents, as well as continued integration with virtualization technologies of all kinds,” said Stephen Beamish, Mitel’s vice president, corporate marketing and business development. “They will now have the ability to deliver their agents’ contact center, desktop and softphone capabilities as a unified, virtualized application — it doesn’t get more flexible than that.”

Interested parties can view a demo of this joint solution at VMware’s booth and Mitel’s booth No. 602 at VMware’s Partner Exchange 2012, currently taking place in at the Venetian Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas through Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012.

Additional information on Mitel Contact Center Solutions can be found at: http://www.mitel.com/products/contact-center/enterprise-edition

Additional Resources

Download Mitel’s report on virtualization and UC featuring Gartner research at: www.mitel.com/gartner-virtualization-newsletter
Twitter: @VMwarePEX (hashtag #VMwarePEX), @VMware_Partners, @Mitel
VMworld and Mitel Blogs: http://blogs.vmware.com/partner; www.mitel.com/mitelfreedom

About Mitel
Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL) is a global provider of business communications and collaboration software and services. Mitel’s Freedom architecture provides the flexibility and simplicity organizations need to support today’s dynamic work environment. Through a single cloud-ready software stream, Mitel delivers a powerful suite of advanced communications and collaboration capabilities that provides freedom from walled garden architectures and enables organizations to implement best-of-breed solutions on any network; extends the “in-office” experience anywhere, on any device; and offers choice of commercial options to fit business needs. For more information visit: http://www.mitel.com

Mitel and the Mitel logo are registered trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The Mitel Networks Corporation logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=8599

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About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 300,000 customers and 25,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware and VMware View are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT:
Jay Nichols (media)
415-992-3210
jnichols@sterlingpr.com

Cynthia Hiponia (investor relations)
613-592-2122 x1992
investorrelations@mitel.com

Ken Lotich
VMware PR
650-427-1911
klotich@vmware.com

Source: Mitel Networks Corporation
News Provided by Acquire Media

Unlike other stand-alone contact center solutions, prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync is built natively on the unified communications and voice-over-IP architecture of Microsoft’s Lync Server 2010 platform, adding full-featured Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), real-time management, and historical reporting applications to the Lync solution. On the desktop, prairieFyre’s Ignite toolbar integrates with the Lync 2010 client to provide ACD agent functionality and deliver a unique unified desktop experience to contact center agents without proprietary third-party client applications.

“prairieFyre’s Contact Center for Microsoft Lync is different because of its tight-knit integration with Lync Server, Active Directory, Exchange, and Office. As a result, businesses are seeing a return on investment as soon as four months after the initial installation and deployment. With the Ignite client, we’re able to add sophisticated ACD functionality to the agent desktop while continuing to enable contact center agents to use familiar Lync client and Office applications,” said Todd Simons, Vice President Business Development, prairieFyre Software Inc.

The prairieFyre Ignite application combines telephony, messaging, agent state control, and real-time statistics in the Microsoft Lync client. Call center agents can recognize customers and instantly update their agent state. They can consult with employees, transfer calls, and request help. Comprehensive real-time statistics notify agents immediately of any issues with their performance and enable them to see the availability of other agents and employees within their business.

Within the last year, prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync has seen significant uptake within the small- to mid-size contact center market. As more businesses realize the cost-savings and efficiencies gained by migrating from a TDM telephone system to Lync, they are also realizing that they can get the most out of their investment with the prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync solution. Because of its tight integration with Lync and other back office Microsoft platforms, IT professionals need not worry about the cost and complexity of maintaining separate, proprietary infrastructures.

“prairieFyre Software was selected to receive a 2011 Product of the Year Award for its achievement in advancing CRM, contact center, and call center technologies. The Contact Center for Microsoft Lync solution has demonstrated excellence as well as provided ROI for the companies that use it,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has been recognizing innovative companies for 14 years and prairieFyre Software has earned its place with this distinguished honor.”

The 14th Annual Product of the Year Award winners are published in the January/February 2012 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, www.cismag.com.

For more information about the Customer Interaction Solutions’ 2011 Product of the Year Awards or any of the TMC media properties, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About prairieFyre Software
prairieFyre Software has deployed contact center solutions to over 8,000 customers in over 70 countries worldwide. They have leveraged this experience to create an affordable yet feature-rich solution that is ideal for enterprises looking for a contact center designed to work with Lync Server.

About Customer Interaction Solutions
Since 1982, Customer Interaction Solutions (CIS) magazine has been the voice of the call/contact center, CRM and teleservices industries. CIS magazine has helped the industry germinate, grow, mature and prosper, and has served as the leading publication in helping these industries that have had such a positive impact on the world economy to continue to thrive. Through a combination of outstanding and cutting-edge original editorial, industry voices, in-depth lab reviews and the recognition of the innovative leaders in management and technology through our highly valued awards, Customer Interaction Solutions strives to continue to be the publication that holds the quality bar high for the industry. Please visit www.cismag.com for more information.

About TMC
TMC is a global, integrated media company that helps clients build communities in print, in person, and online. TMC publishes the Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Next Gen Mobility and Cloud Computing (formerly InfoTECH Spotlight) magazines. TMCnet.com, which is read by two million unique visitors each month, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. TMC is the producer of ITEXPO, the world’s leading B2B communications event. In addition, TMC runs multiple industry events: 4G Wireless Evolution; M2M Evolution; Cloud Communications Expo; SIP Tutorial 2.0:Bringing SIP to the Web; Business Video Expo; Regulatory 2.0 Workshop; DevCon5; HTML5 Summit; CVx; AstriCon; StartupCamp; MSPAlliance MSPWorld and more. Visit TMC Events for a complete listing and further information.

For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

Company Contact:
Todd Simons
Vice President, Business Development
613-599-0045 ext. 1197
tsimons@prairiefyre.com

TMC Contact:
Jan Pierret
Marketing Manager
203-852-6800, ext. 228
jpierret@tmcnet.com

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners

Read the full article here.

As part of the study, Forrester interviewed an enterprise with 600 employees across multiple sites about its experience implementing Mitel’s virtualized UCC solution. Forrester found a three-year, risk-adjusted Return-On-Investment (ROI) of 84 percent, and a total payback period of 7.8 months.

According to the report, the organization also realized the following benefits after deploying the solution:
• Productivity savings with Unified Communications (UC) and better user experience
• Cost avoidance of an alternative, non-virtualized, voice solution and corresponding annual support
• Cost savings from utilizing SIP trunking
• Failover savings from using software-based technology
• Hardware and disaster recovery savings from virtualization infrastructure
• IT administrative savings through faster recovery
• Training and cost avoidance
• Cost savings from better scalability
• Lower risk from downtime
• Increased flexibility for future growth and new capabilities

The content of the study is based solely on Forrester’s analysis. To obtain a copy of the full study, visit http://discover.mitel.com/Forrester_report.html.

“When our customers call our contact center, we need to know why they are calling and ensure we are routing them to the best source of information, all while managing their services expectations,” said Jimmy Everingham, project manager at Hoburne Holiday Parks. “Mitel Contact Center Solutions enables us to easily scale up our capacity to meet periods of peak demand, and Visual Workflow Manager lets us better manage the customer experience with call flows that can be quickly and easily changed to ensure we are providing the information and resources that best address a specific customer’s needs. The end result is a more satisfied customer.”

Mitel Contact Center Solutions incorporates a number of new features that can extend greater flexibility and scalability to contact centers including:

• External “hot desking” – Enabling agents to work from any device, anywhere, giving contact center managers the potential for greater staffing flexibility and business continuity.
• Social media integration – Enabling businesses to protect their brand with integration to third-party social media monitoring applications, so that agents can provide proactive responses to social media sites, industry blogs, wikis, knowledge bases, and forums.
• Visual Workflow Manager – Improving contact center manageability and scalability with a new, easier to manage Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution, providing the ability to quickly and easily build and manage call flows via a drag and drop graphical interface.
• Scalability – Increasing capacity to support up to 800 active agents and 2100 agent IDs, with Active Directory Synchronization for simplified provisioning.

“Our contact center customers gave us consistent feedback on their needs; greater flexibility for how and where their agents can work and the ability to interact with their customers no matter what medium they use, be it social media, voice or messaging,” said Ron Wellard, executive vice president and general manager, Mitel Communications Solutions. “This latest iteration of Mitel Contact Center Solutions delivers this functionality, allowing their agents to use any device from anywhere to deliver a superior customer experience.”

About Mitel

Mitel (Nasdaq:MITL) is a global provider of business communications and collaboration software and services. Mitel’s Freedom architecture provides the flexibility and simplicity organizations need to support today’s dynamic work environment. Through a single cloud-ready software stream, Mitel delivers a powerful suite of advanced communications and collaboration capabilities that provides freedom from walled garden architectures and enables organizations to implement best-of-breed solutions on any network; extends the “in-office” experience anywhere, on any device; and offers choice of commercial options to fit business needs. For more information, visit: http://www.mitel.com

The Mitel Networks Corporation logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=7323

Mitel and the Mitel logo are registered trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Read the entire press release here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 ‘Microsoft Canada Inc. recognizes the achievements of leading Canadian technology partners’

Ottawa, CANADA, November 3, 2011 – prairieFyre is proud to announce that it has been selected as a finalist in the Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year category for the 2011 Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards. The ninth annual IMPACT Awards recognize excellence within the Microsoft technology partner community in Canada. 

“Technology partners are at the core of Microsoft’s business.” said Neil Tanner, Vice-President, Small Business, Midmarket Solutions & Partners, Microsoft Canada Inc. “We are honoured to celebrate and recognize the outstanding achievements of industry leaders like prairieFyre Software through the Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards.  We are proud to work with them as they deliver innovative solutions to mutual customers. ” 

prairieFyre Software was chosen as a finalist in the Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year category for its Contact Center for Microsoft Lync portfolio of applications, which provides sophisticated contact center functionality to the 10- to 250-agent contact center market, without the costs often associated with a rich, full featured contact center solution. 

“It is a pleasure to be recognized in this year’s Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards,” said Todd Simons, Director of Business Development at prairieFyre. “It is a testament to our investment in developing contact center software on the Microsoft Lync platform, the hard work of all the employees at prairieFyre, and the satisfaction of our business partners and ever-growing customer base.”           

prairieFyre, along with other technology partner winners and finalists in each of the award categories, will be honored at an award ceremony in Toronto on November 30, 2011.

About the Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards  

In 2003, Microsoft Canada Inc. launched the IMPACT Awards, a program to recognize the numerous achievements within its technology Partner community.   This year’s awards program is bigger than ever with over 35 award categories designed to recognize excellence across Microsoft Partner Network competencies, emerging technologies, community involvement as well as sales, marketing and partnering excellence.

The IMPACT Awards are open to Active Canadian members of the Microsoft Partner Network. 

For a list of all 2011 finalists, and more information on the Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards, please visit http://www.microsoft.ca/awards.

About prairieFyre Software

prairieFyre Software Inc. is a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner developing .NET-based telecommunications products including contact center, call accounting, and customer relationship management solutions. These products are built on Microsoft best practices for software design and Mitel and Microsoft’s portfolios of leading telephony platforms and technologies. prairieFyre brings integrity, innovative minds, and leading-edge technology to the development process and is committed to delivering dynamic Internet-based software solutions to customers. 

For more information (press only):

Matthew Clare
Solutions Marketing Manager, prairieFyre Software
mclare@prairiefyre.com
613-599-0045

For more information on Microsoft Partner Network IMPACT Awards only, please contact:

Danielle Shedletzky
Microsoft Canada
t-danies@microsoft.com

For more information, see the Unified Communications Voice Summit 2011 Brochure (Dallas) and Unified Communications Voice Summit 2011 Brochure (Chicago).

Register today: Dallas, Chicago

We hope to see you there!
Todd Simons
Vice President, Business Development