Mitel UC360

Transcript for Mitel UC360

Blair Pleasant: Hi, this is Blair Pleasant. I am here with Wendy Moore-Bayley. Wendy is Director of Market Development at Mitel. And Wendy, we just heard about a new product that Mitel is introducing called UC360. What can you tell us about it?

Wendy Moore-Bayley: We are really excited about Mitel UC360. We see it as a brand new product category in the market. Essentially what it is, is an all-in-one multi-media collaboration device that combines four-party audio and video bridge, in-room presentation display, so it can connect to an HTMI-connected monitor or a projector. And it also allows you to share documents with those people who are joining the video conference remotely. So it’s an all-in-one solution that we really have priced disruptively in the market. It’s priced at less than $2,000, and it essentially can be deployed in multiple offices or personal meeting spaces.

If you look at what we are trying to do with this solution is really address what we see as a collaboration gap. There are lots of personal collaboration tools available out there – SIP-based video clients, our own Unified Communicator Advanced, that the user can use on their personal desktop or their personal mobile device. And these are great for the individual. But as soon as you bring in a couple of more people into the actual room with that person, they need to huddle around a small webcam and a small desktop. And it’s just not a great collaboration experience. At the other end of the extreme, something that is more suitable for groups is room-based video solutions: video solutions that basically are in excess of $10,000 out there in the market. And as a consequence, these tend to only be deployed in special meeting rooms, and they’re reserved for special events and not part of your day-to-day collaboration.

We see UC360 as really filling the gap in between these two extremes. It is something that can be deployed broadly in the organization and it’s something that addresses the cost and price constraints of deploying it more broadly.

Another great thing about this solution is that it is an all-in-one solution, meaning that everything is in one sleek single unit that’s easily managed and deployed. Unlike room-based systems where there tends to be multiple components, so there’s a video component and other audio conferencing, and then usually you are sending out web collaboration links... This is an all-in-one solution that really makes starting a full video conference with up to three remote parties as simple as making a phone call.

Blair: Great, well since we are at the Mitel business partner conference, what do business partners need to understand about the product and how is this really helpful to them in selling more product?

Wendy: Well, that’s one of the really great things about UC360 is that it has been designed with full flexible interoperability. So when I talk about interoperability, it is interoperable on a few fronts. It can be deployed alongside obviously a Mitel IP PBX or alongside any third-party PBX. It is a SIP-based device that is standards compliant and can work in any PBX environment. This is really important to our channel partners. Many customers now are sweating their assets longer, so they are trying to wring more usage and years out of the assets they have already invested in. And as a consequence, they may not be ready to replace a PBX that they have in place already, but they may be looking for things that they can wear on top of that PBX to create more value for their users and a more collaborative environment. UC360 is a great opportunity for our channel partners because they can go into those environments where customers may not be ready to replace their PBX and still sell in UC360 to work there.

Also on the interoperability front, though, we have interoperability with SIP-based video clients and as well as SIP-based room based video systems. That is really important. Obviously to be successful from a collaboration prospective, you need to be able to communicate with the other end. And the other end does not always have the same solution that you have. If you want to communicate with a partner or a customer, somebody outside of your enterprise walls, they can be using any SIP-based video client, or they can be using a room-based video system. As part of our announcement this week we announced interoperability with video and also with Polycom. So it is really important that this can be deployed and work alongside those environments as well.

Blair: It sounds like it fills a very niche type of area; it’s not the large teleconference rooms and it’s not the point-to-point desktop video. So do you see a lot of use for this in-between type of area?

Wendy: I actually do. Our research that we see out in the market is that the majority of meetings that happen actually are four parties or less. And people are still going into small meeting rooms and still having those day-to-day collaboration sessions. We really don’t see it as a niche play. We see that, in your typical organization, there is going to be more places to deploy this product than there is a room-based video system, where you are only going to deploy one or two. So we really don’t see it as a niche play at all, we think it will deploy broadly across many different types of organizations.

Blair: Okay, well great, thank you very much.

Wendy: Thank you, Blair.