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

prairieFyre will participate in the WPC Expo tradeshow, at booth #1135 in Hall K, where our sales staff will provide demonstrations of our Contact Center for Microsoft Lync, a modular, integrated software suite that provides sophisticated contact center functionality for the Lync 2010 Unified Communications platform. Building upon prairieFyre’s extensive experience in contact center solutions, Contact Center for Microsoft Lync offers contact centers presence-aware telephony, conferencing, messaging, and agent mobility, and provides them with real-time monitoring and enterprise-wide reports and statistics.

This year we are excited to showcase Ignite, our new agent desktop toolbar for Contact Center for Microsoft Lync. Ignite integrates and synchronizes with the Lync 2010 client, providing a combination of ACD soft phone, enterprise presence, and feature-rich tabs with real-time contact center information. Ignite provides queue and performance information, controls agent logins and mobility between queues, and provides easy to use controls that allow agents to quickly change states to meet service levels.

If you are going to be at WPC 2011, stop by our booth where we will be more than happy to chat, give you the latest demo, and answer questions about our prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync and the new Ignite solution.

Todd Simons
Vice-President, Business Development

Ottawa, CANADA, July 6^th, 2011 – prairieFyre Software is excited to announce that it has completed verification field trials of its prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync and the AudioCodes SmartTap Lync call recording solution. Together, AudioCodes SmartTap and prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync deliver sophisticated contact center functionality for the Microsoft Lync 2010 unified communications (UC) platform.

prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync is a modular software suite developed on the voice over IP (VoIP) and UC architecture of Microsoft Lync Server 2010. prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync is the ideal solution for organizations that require a comprehensive contact center solution and wish to leverage the advanced enterprise voice features of the Lync UC platform.

“As an early adopter of Microsoft’s unified communications platform, prairieFyre has taken a lead position in providing an innovative, presence-aware contact center solution,” says Nimrod Borovsky, Vice President of Marketing at AudioCodes. “We are very pleased to complete interoperability testing and partner with prairieFyre to provide Microsoft Lync customers with a feature rich contact center solution.”

AudioCodes, an industry-recognized provider of best-in-class VoIP technology, has extended their product offerings to include SmartTap, a complete call recording solution for Microsoft Lync. SmartTap is a fully IP-centric application that utilizes open standard protocols to record both internal and external calls for compliance regulations, dispute resolution, customer satisfaction, and public safety requirements.

“Our prairieFyreContact Center, in conjunction with AudioCodes SmartTap, provides a complete, scalable solution for those customers who have chosen Lync for their enterprise voice solution,” says Chris Courneya, CEO, prairieFyre Software. “The SmartTap solution is compelling in an ACD environment because it records calls without consuming valuable Lync resources such as conferencing services. Instead, it deploys a certified plugin on the Lync server that decrypts SRTP signaling while preserving the data integrity and quality of the conversation.”

With its broad functionality and modular design, prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync can be tailored to businesses of any size or industry, supporting departmental, standalone, or geographically dispersed deployments equally. prairieFyre Contact Center for Microsoft Lync will be on display at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, July 10^th to 14^th ,2011, at prairieFyre’s booth, #1135.

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.

For more information, collateral, and a demo, visit www.prairiefyre.com

Contacts
prairieFyre Software
Todd Simons, Vice President, Business Development
613-599-0045 ext. 1197

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

Read the full article at iTWire.

At the conference prairieFyre will be giving customers a sneak peek at Version 6.0 of Mitel Contact Center Solutions and Call Accounting, slated for release in Fall 2011. Version 6.0 introduces prairieFyre’s next generation IVR solution, Visual Workflow Manager. Replacing Intelligent Queue in late 2012, this product has a familiar Microsoft Visio-like drag-and-drop user interface, removing the complexity of programming sophisticated inbound workflows. Contact Center managers can now manage their own call flows in real-time, ensuring that every caller is always handled efficiently and routed to the properly skilled agent. The new workflow engine provides several cost savings enhancements, allowing contact centers to offer more customer service options while utilizing far fewer port resources.  Visual Workflow Manager’s architecture is designed to quickly and easily deploy multiple live software instances to scale up to growing call volumes while providing redundancy across servers located  at any geographic location.

“Growing your Mitel contact center while adding unprecedented business continuity has never been easier.” states Chris Courneya, CEO. “Visual Workflow Manager lowers the administrative costs of the contact center – these savings will go directly to our customer’s bottom line.”    

Contact Center Solutions and Call Accounting Version 6.0 software has also been updated to grow with the 3300 ICP MCD 5.0 large-scale ACD initiatives. This enables Contact Center Solutions software to support enterprise-size contact centers, running more agents and queues as well as processing more calls than ever before.

In Version 6.0, Contact Center Client provides full ACD functionality in the Mitel Freedom architecture, where any agent has the freedom to work from any endpoint, including analog, digital, SIP, and mobile phone devices. This has several benefits, allowing you to enable agents to work from home, every day, on traditional analog phone sets or use this technology as a form of disaster recovery in the event employees are unable to work from their primary office location. Version 6.0 also introduces 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 server support to the Contact Center and Call Accounting Enterprise Server, enables Business Edition customers to run Contact Center and Call Accounting server software from a Windows 7 operating system, and introduces VMware support for Multimedia Contact Center.

On the floor of the Solutions Expo area, prairieFyre will be present at booths 315 and 409, providing product demonstrations and consulting services. At Mitel’s contact center booth (booth 315), prairieFyre’s knowledgeable sales team will be conducting live demonstrations of prairieFyre’s Contact Center Solutions product and answering any questions about prairieFyre’s software offerings. prairieFyre’s Professional Services booth (booth 409) will have expert staff available for consultation on training, custom development, installation, and system engineering for all Mitel software offerings. For visitors specifically interested in custom development for their contact center solution, the Professional Services booth will be offering a special limited time offer of reduced pricing for Contact Center custom developments, helping clients tailor their contact center solution to their specific needs.

prairieFyre Software Inc. is proud to be Mitel’s trusted OEM partner for contact centers and call accounting software for over 10 years. Our products leverage Mitel’s portfolio of leading telephony platforms and technologies to deliver affordable, dynamic Internet-based software solutions to over 7,000 customers in over 70 countries worldwide.