Tellumat offers leading IP-based unified communications

While some vendors continue to market voice over Internet Protocol(VOIP), it is time to move on from this misleading term in the quality conscious arena of enterprise communications. “VOIP will find it hard to live down its association with cheap Internet calls,” says Bennie Langenhoven, Managing Executive of Tellumat Telecoms, the communications specialist in the Tellumat Group. “But IP-based communication is so much more than that. When done right, it enables efficient, productive communications through convergence, or what has come to be known as ‘unified communication’.”

Unified communications benefits
The benefits of unified comms (UC) include:

• Increased productivity – for instance the ability to do e-mail on the run, work seamlessly from home or collaborate on a wide range of platforms, internally or externally (combining instant messaging, e-mail, white-boarding, application sharing and conferencing with voice calls);


• Customer satisfaction – presence management allows customers to find a representative wherever he or she may be. Staff interaction with customers need never be unprofessional, as communication is always front-ended with a company number;


• Reduced costs – one needs fewer resources (including skills) and less infrastructure to handle unified communications than one does to handle separate voice and IT comms. Presence management also allows optimal routing of calls via the cheapest channel;


• UC can even be environmentally friendly: conferencing tools reduce travel carbon emissions,


• Automation – integrated with business processes, companies can auto-generate meaningful communications. For example, a debtors clerk can be reminded of a specific customer’s due date though integration with the company’s ERP system.

Business process end-game
The magic of UC is IP or Internet Protocol, the common fabric that weaves together traditional computer communications (e-mail, IM and Web-conferencing) with voice (fixed and mobile), video and new Web 2.0 communications tools.
Where will UC lead us?
To an end-game of communications driven business processes, Langenhoven says. “In the future, voice will be driven by business processes. There won’t be a dedicated voice switch that is integrated into the enterprise back-end. Voice will be an application like any other on the network, built into business processes from the ground up. Voice switching will be driven by business rules, not by the number dialled.”

Place your bets
The technology battle around unified comms is still intensifying, and is waged by traditional IP stalwarts including Cisco and Microsoft on the one end, and telecoms vendors like Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent on the other. Two years ago Tellumat went in search of UC technology that would heavily impact the market. Recently it won the distribution rights for Shore-Tel, a North American rising star that has both critical acclaim and excellent growth figures. Frost & Sullivan recognises ShoreTel’s “explosive growth” (its sales have doubled each year since inception in 1998, outpacing the bustling IP comms market). The research firm notes that ShoreTel has an edge over other players, in that it had started “from a clean sheet of paper”, an approach that solves the integration conundrum in a way that the other camps are finding hard to emulate. Langenhoven says among others, ShoreTel’s pure IP focus and distributed architecture attracted Tellumat. “We were looking for something to compete well in the new (unified) technology space, something that offers both a strong differentiation and a high degree of reliability. To us as long-time manufacturer-distributors of PBXs, the need for reliability is a non-negotiable. At the same time, we appreciate the IT mindset of a network that easily supports multiple sites. In ShoreTel we found the best combination of those qualities.”
He says the following attributes of the vendor and its range are the most impressive:

• Unique architecture and simple integration into many business applications


• Independently audited customer satisfaction programme (bonuses at all levels of the organisation are mapped to a customer satisfaction index)


• Lowest cost of ownership for VOIP solutions


• Ease-of-use, and


• Cost-effective manageability, thanks to the distributed IP architecture

Independent praise
Langenhoven and Frost are not alone in their praise. A second independent research organisation, Nemertes, rated ShoreTel’s portfolio against those of Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, 3Com and Alcatel-Lucent. Unbelievably, it awarded the newcomer top honours in every category (features, customer service, value and ease of use). Overall, ShoreTel rated as follows against its peers:
While the results are highly favourable to ShoreTel, notes Nemertes, the report was conducted solely by it, and was not sponsored by any company, including ShoreTel. Langenhoven’s take on the vendor’s winning qualities is that Tellumat generally selects a product range on the basis of tangible value, which translates into quality at a low total cost of ownership and a good return on investment. “All these metrics are answered convincingly by ShoreTel. One can scarcely imagine a better value proposition than this.”

* The Nemertes report is available here:
http://www.shoretel.com/resources/industry_research/downloads/shoretel_nemertes_executive_summary.pdf