On September 14 Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) held a ceremony to acknowledge the “best-of-show” winners at the ITEXPO West 2011 Conference.

Among the record number of exhibitors who took part in the expo, Siemens Enterprise Communications won the award for “Best Cloud Solution” alongside Hexagrid.

TMC CEO and Conference Chairman Rich Tehrani commented “Our event this week in Austin has raised the bar in every conceivable way

– from conference content, to attendee count, and for the quality and breadth of the products and solutions that are showcased on our Exhibit Hall floor.

We’re pleased to honor the ‘best-of-show’ winners, and we congratulate them for differentiating themselves in various technology categories amongst a large and highly competitive field.

OpenStage 15 Handsets

The Siemens website has some great training material on the features of the OpenStage handsets. Take a look to see how to use the handsets, or to learn about some of the features that you may not have been taking advantage of.

The site contains:

OpenStage 40 Handsets

• Video Training for range of basic and advanced telephony functions for the OpenStage range of handsets.
• Quick Reference cards in PDF format to print or save. These are a guide on how to use the OpenStage handsets, and link to videos for more information on the features.
• End User Training videos, to work through at your own pace to learn about your handset.

OpenStage 60 Handsets

These resources would be fantastic for someone new to the Siemens range, but are worth a look even if you have been using the handsets for a while to see if there are some features that you have not been utilising.

The 2010 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award distinguishes those companies that brought ground-breaking advancements to UC technologies in the past year. Unified Communications is pleased to present its readers with a means of identifying exceptional UC solutions.

The winners which were selected to be a part of this elite list of the Product of the Year Awards have demonstrated that their products or services have gone the extra mile to help improve unified communications solutions for both the customer experience and the ROI for the companies that use them,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Congratulations to all the winners and I look forward to seeing continued technological advancement in the coming year.”

OpenScape Office V3 includes new SMB deployment options for all-in-one, IP-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions, tailored to meet the communications needs of companies with up to 500 users in single and up to 1000 users in multisite environments. OpenScape Office V3 offers the most complete UC offering for SMBs on the market today, including voice and conferencing services, presence, mobility, social networking and multi-channel contact center capabilities. These features combine to help SMBs increase productivity, offer better customer service and save on communication costs.

“Siemens Enterprise Communications and the SMB team is really thrilled to have been selected for this award and would like to thank the TMC team,” said Robert Ehses, senior vice president product management and development for SMB at Siemens Enterprise Communications. “The goal of OpenScape Office is to uniquely simplify communications through All-in-One UC solution customized to the needs of SMBs customer and channel partners and with the new software version we even extended the addressable customer size footprint to the 150+ user segment. This award is a proof point of our commitment and leadership position to make UCC available in the SMB Market space”.

Unified Communications is the first and only publication dedicated to educating readers on UC solutions. Winners of 2010 Product of the Year Awards are published in the April 2011 issue of Unified Communications magazine. For more information about TMC, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

New unlimited mobile rates have been reduced to levels which are cheaper than landline telephone line rental.

You can take advantage of the free calls by purchasing a GSM Unit from TAMCO which routes calls made on your telephone system via a SIM card giving your company free calls.

Benefits

• Free, unlimited calls!
• Reduced monthly line rental.
• Quick & Easy Setup.
• Save thousands of dollars per year.
• Mobile carrier provides rebate on the cost of the GSM Unit.

2 Channel GSM - $90 per month + FREE CALLS  

If you have many telephone lines, it may be possible to disconnect 2 of your current lines and the saving will fund the GSM unit’s monthly cost.

If you are interested in this offer, please contact your account manager for more details.

(Hardware costs apply however the GSM provider will provide you with a partial rebate on the cost of the new hardware)

You simply dial the telephone number you wish to dial and the Openscape connect software will do the rest!

By combining a GSM Unit, Siemens Mobility and the Openscape Connect this can slash your company mobile bills by thousands of dollars each year.

Contact your sales manager or phone 02 8978 7000 for more information.

The ‘mock’ RFP solution response was solicited from vendors at Enterprise Connect, generating proposals from nine leading vendor participants. The RFP competition allows vendors to put their best foot forward and provide a representative and comprehensive solution for Voice and Unified Communications, as it would apply to a fictional multi-site enterprise.

The RFP was designed, developed and responses evaluated by an independent consulting group for Enterprise Connect Conference held in Orlando March 2011. The requirements for the RFP response included provisioning 2,000 users at both headquarters and branch locations, and support for 100% growth distributed across all facilities without replacement of any initially installed hardware or software. Additionally two key reliability requirements were identified: 1) geo-redundancy (headquarters and remote location) for call control, and 2) Branch Office survivability in the event of WAN outage. The vendor solution proposals were judged on the following criteria:

· Satisfaction of system performance requirements
· Architecture and Technical aspects of the solution
· Price of the proposed solution for one time cost of the solution
· Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in terms of annual recurring costs
· Various miscellaneous attributes and requirements

In the final evaluation, Siemens Enterprise Communications scored 91 out of a possible 100 points, to take the winning position on the RFP response.

The closest vendor was Avaya, who scored 88, followed by Cisco, Shoretel, Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, Mitel, NEC and Aastra. Quite an accomplishment.

Key Takeaways and Validations

1) In a real life head to head competition, independently verified, the SEN Large Enterprise Solutions (OpenScape Voice, OpenScape Branch, OpenScape UC Applications) beat every major enterprise solution vendor on technical and functional merits

2) This is a great validation for our TCO leadership as we beat all competition in this category.

3) We raised the bar on end user experience by including OpenStage 60 phones in the RFP response and still maintained TCO leadership

4) Our superior capabilities in reliability based on our carrier grade solution (Geo-Redundancy, OpenScape Branch survivability) recognized as strengths of our solution architecture.

Special recognition and congratulations goes to the team that dedicated the time and effort in responding to the Enterprise Connect RFP – they scored 100% in the RFP compliance category.

Best regards
Edgar Giesel
General Manager

Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG
Representative Office Australia & New Zealand

Siemens Enterprise Communications today announced that the award-winning HiPath 3000 converged IP solution has passed a landmark five million lines deployed. It has also been reported as the world’s leading Hybrid PBX VoIP Telephone System in terms of revenue for the third year in succession by leading analyst firm Dell’Oro Group.

To enable Siemens Enterprise Communications’ extensive network of partners to capitalize on this growth and realize increased revenue opportunities, today also sees the launch of OpenScape Office HX and further upgrades to the HiPath 3000. Designed specifically for small and medium enterprises, OpenScape Office HX is a Unified Communications (UC) software application that gives existing HiPath 3000 customers the opportunity to leverage their current communications investment, while experiencing new features and all the benefits of next-generation UC including presence, chat, voicemail and mobility.

The majority of TAMCO telecommunications solutions are based on the HiPath 3000 which has been continually upgraded and developed by Siemens over the last 10 years.

Our customers are able to upgrade to VoIP / Voice over IP whilst retaining most of their existing hardware.

Michael Fisher, Managing Director of Brita Water Filter Systems (Aust.) stated “The business has grown and we need to realise the importance of communication to assist in the overall business strategy, helping the business and its staff to work flexibly, efficiently and with greater availability.”

After investigating solutions available, Brita Water chose Siemens HiPath VoIP communication system as it provides the functionality and scalability to grow with the business and the ever changing communication landscape.

Michael explains “The business constantly faces new challenges and opportunities. We need a business-aligned communication solution that is free to grow as our business evolves to satisfy current and future demands. TAMCO is the communication solutions provider that understood our needs and deployed a solution that met our requirements. We are pleased with the design, deploy, service and support of our new communication solution.”

”TAMCO’s installation the system in our new premises was completed as scheduled. We were impressed with their planning and attention to the detail of our needs. They provided initial training and follow-up. Their support team is very responsive in resolving any issues that may arise. TAMCO has assisted us in numerous ways to reduce our tele-communications costs. In short, their service has exceeded expectations.”

Some of the key features of the Siemens HiPath Voice over IP VoIP communication system included:

Lower communication cost, via Internet (VoIP) based telephone calls that had improved our productivity and significantly cut down our month phone bill especially on STD and overseas calls.

Great flexibility and contact ability through Siemens Mobility, be out and about as you need – but constantly contactable, whist dramatically reducing the mobile costs.

Home office solution, to allow my employees work conveniently whilst being available longer, and still achieve a work-life balance.

Lastly, with one number contact ability and sharing of 1 voicemail box, I stopped giving out multiple contact numbers, and the calls come directly to me on my desk phone, mobile phone and even home office, and all with 1 voicemail box that could checked on the phones, or on my email.

With TAMCO ‘s professionalism and its implementation and deployment strategy of the turnkey solution, it is business as usual for us as Brita Water, we experienced minimal downtime, professional training and support that are vital to us. Key to our workings with them is they made it simple.

Michael Fisher
Managing Director
Brita Water Filter Systems (Aust.)

“This solution has not only allowed our agents to be freed from their desks to go out and get business, but also reduced overheads in our phone bills,” said Paul Byrne, managing director LJ Hooker.

“Many businesses, real estate included, tend to work on having their employees supply their own phones and then reimbursing them.

“By owning the phones however we can have them on the same plan, remove the cost of interoffice calls and as an additional, and maybe the most important benefit, we keep the contact number. So if an agent moves on to a competitor, we still own the contacts that come through the phones,” he added.

TAMCO installed a Siemens HiPath 3000 VoIP system for the 14 strong office. There is also a SIM gateway that plugs into the real estate’s phone system, so that calls to and from the workplace and the mobiles are free.

“Commercial Real estate is a competitive business, and to us, we need our people out showing property or evaluating listings not sat at their desks,” said Byrne.

“As our business has grown we realised the importance of mobility to let our people work more efficiently out on the road – communication is key to our business,” he added.

The solution was purchased through TAMCO, an IPL Communications partner who helped develop and deploy the solution.

“TAMCO made the upgrade process simple and designed a system that met the needs of our business. They are always keen to follow up and assist and explain. We received training and have ongoing support which is vital to a customer facing organisation,” said Byrne.

The system is VoIP / Voice Over IP capable which allows the system to expand to other sites if needed in the future.