Cloud Communications

Name: Towner Communications
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March 29 2016

Team Collaboration Shaves Your Day

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, cloud, Cloud Communications, Collaboration, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile

Here’s something to think about the next time you’re listening to music on hold: How much time does inefficient communication drain from your workday? The answer may surprise you.

The average knowledge worker, according to some estimates, spends more than one hour every day simply trying to communicate with people: checking emails, setting up meetings, leaving voicemails, etc.

And that doesn’t take into account the delays that result as you wait for people to check those emails or voicemails and get back to you.

Fortunately, there’s a great way to trim this waste out of your workday, and it doesn’t require that you go on a communications diet. In fact, you can communicate and collaborate all you want—and keep saving time as you do it. The secret is to unify your communications in the cloud. By putting all of your communications and collaboration tools into one application and hosting it in the cloud, you can trim seventy minutes or more from your workday and get more done. Here’s how.

1. Stop checking multiple messaging apps (Save 40 minutes per day)

Studies show that workers spend as much as 40 minutes (or more) each day checking and re-checking different messaging applications including email, voicemail, texts/IMs and other apps. With unified communications (UC) in the cloud, all messages can be corralled into a single app and screen, so you don’t need to open up and check multiple apps, multiple times per day. And with services like voicemail-to-text, you can save even more time by converting your voicemails into email messages.

2. Reach colleagues right away (Save 30 minutes per day)

Find-me/follow-me, call forwarding, single-number service—call it what you will, when calls go directly to the right person rather than their voicemail, it saves a lot of time. (On the other side of that coin, it can take eight hours or more before a person listens to their voicemails.) Factor in presence-based communications tools that let you know when called parties are available, and you can cut down your phone-tag time by half an hour every day.

3. Don’t juggle other people’s calendars (Save time and your sanity)

Arranging a multi-party conference call can feel like herding cats; as soon as one gets in line, another escapes. Cloud-based UC tools simplify real-time collaboration by allowing you to launch a video- or audio conference on the fly, or view colleagues’ status to see when they’re available.

4. Have the answers now—and not when you’re back in the office (Save time, gas and customer relationships)

Knowledge workers need access to critical, and often sensitive, business information from wherever they’re working: at home, at a client site, on the road, etc. Cloud-based communications allow employees to quickly locate and retrieve information in real time from any device—and not just when they’re back in the office at their computer. That means customers can get answers faster, and stay happier longer.

Of course, not all cloud solutions are created equal. You need to consider cost, complexity, security, reliability and compatibility with the tools you use today. And when everything is considered, more companies choose Mitel for their business cloud communications than any other provider in the world.

Learn more about Towner Communications and the MiTeam cloud collaboration suite >

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February 5 2016

Mobile Cloud Suite

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog cloud, Cloud and Clear, Cloud Communications, mitel, T-Mobile, Towner, Towner Communications

The Mobile Cloud Suite bundles together the network elements and applications required to get services like VoLTE, VoWiFi, ViLTE, and Advanced Messaging launched and available to subscribers quickly.

Subscribers demand new and innovative services such as Voice over WiFi, Voice over LTE and Converged Messaging. These services are typically offered by Tier 1 providers and can be complex, time consuming, and the capital investment can be quite high.

Now, Communications Service Providers can rapidly offer these services with Mitel Mobile Suite. Ideal for smaller Mobile Network Operators, Cable or Fixed-Line operators, looking to increase the value they bring to subscribers. With deployment flexibility in mind, the Mobile Cloud Suite can be installed in the service provider network or leverage Towner’s MiCloud with no infrastructure investment and convenient per subscriber pricing.

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February 4 2016

Is Cloud-Mobile Convergence the Future?

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog cloud, Cloud Communications, mitel, Mobile, T-Mobile

A note to small and medium businesses: You can have it all with Cloud-Mobile.

That’s the message from T-Mobile and Mitel, as the two companies launch a new-look approach to the old challenge of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) in select European markets. Marketed as Cloud & Clear, the new offering is an update to the traditional FMC goal of combining fixed (i.e., landline) and mobile phone calls into a single seamless experience that can share the same number and call features.

As its name implies, the new wrinkle in T-Mobile’s offering is the cloud, which now replaces the traditional premise-based portion of the fixed phone experience and provides a smoother migration path to the cloud for enterprises. Targeted initially to the small and medium business market, Cloud & Clear features a variety of Towner Communications technology including our collaboration, unified communications and VoIP solutions—technology that is already well entrenched in thousands of SMBs worldwide.

Recognizing that not all users have the same communications requirements, enterprises can use Cloud & Clear to select and customize user profiles based on common consumption models. Office workers, mobile workers, telecommuters and road warriors are each assigned their own set of features and services to keep costs low and productivity high.

The new solution is currently being rolled out in Europe through T-Mobile’s business partners and will enable the mobile service provider to better serve SMB customers—particularly those that are looking for a seamless migration from their current premise-based phone systems to the cloud.

For industry reaction to the news, read the original UC Strategies article T-Mobile and Mitel Introduce ‘Cloud & Clear’ by Blair Pleasant.

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December 3 2015

Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid Communications

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, Cloud Communications, Growth, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile, Productivity, technology

If you’ve considered upgrading your business phone system, chances are you’ve looked at the differences between cloud hosted systems and on-premises systems—and maybe even discovered the hybrid communications system option, which bridges cloud and on-premises environments. You might also have uncovered a ton of information about the differences online. But what are you supposed to do with all that information? Does it put you any closer to a decision? For many businesses, the answer is no.

So we at Towner Communications put together this simple decision tree to help make things easier. It helps you work thought the most common, critical decision points that most businesses have to take into account. Is it a substitute for a consultation with a Mitel rep or your authorized Mitel partner? Probably not. But it’s a great place to start and will give you a much better idea of which way you should be leaning.

Mitel Unified Communications Trio on landline, mobile phone, and laptop

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November 27 2015

Guide To Cloud Communications

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Business Communications, cloud, Cloud Communications, Customer Experience, Growth, Midsize Business, mitel, Mobile, Mobilizing, Productivity, Small Business, technology

THE BUSY PERSON’S GUIDE TO CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS: As children, we discover that the cloud, like a snowflake, aren’t all created the same. There are cirrus clouds (wispy), cumulus clouds (white and fluffy) and stratus clouds (sheet-like) varieties with a seemingly endless number of sub-varieties. In the same way, cloud communications technology has its own categories—public, private and hybrid cloud communications systems. Telling them apart isn’t as simple as matching a shape with a name and, as a result, there’s a good deal of confusion around what each entails. We created this post to clear up some of that cloud confusion and help you decide which kind of cloud might be right for you.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is what most of us think of when we hear about a system or application being offered in the cloud. As its name implies, it’s publicly available infrastructure that is constructed as a multi-tenant system (i.e., multiple businesses using the same infrastructure) and leased to companies on a sliding monthly scale depending on the amount of cloud capacity they need. Amazon Web Services and Google’s Cloud Storage are examples of public cloud platforms, as are application-specific public cloud offerings like Adobe Creative Cloud and Salesforce.com.

Public clouds are popular because they often feature a low entry cost (remember, you’re not buying any hardware with a public cloud solution) and fast access to vast amounts of capacity during demand spikes. For example, a videoconferencing system deployed in a public cloud could scale out seamlessly to handle high demand during an all-hands meeting, then scale back down when the meeting has ended. Unfortunately, the “public” aspect of the public cloud can present security concerns for enterprises, particularly in heavily-regulated industries, like financial services and healthcare.

Private Cloud

In situations where security trumps cost, a private cloud is the better path. A private cloud often features many of the same scales of efficiency as a public cloud—virtualization, converged infrastructure, etc.—with the distinction that it’s a private, dedicated system residing in the enterprise’s own data center instead of hosted remotely by a third party. The shielded nature of the private cloud allows enterprises to manage access and security in order to meet industry compliance requirements and protect sensitive data. That security, however, comes at a cost; private clouds are typically more expensive than public clouds because of the investment in hardware and the IT resources required to manage them.

Hybrid Cloud

The third type of cloud, hybrid cloud, is really a mixture of public and private clouds. Why would you want to mix cloud types? Well, let’s consider our earlier scale-out example of videoconferencing. In a private cloud architecture, an enterprise would need to overprovision their private cloud to meet peak demand. In other words, much of the time, a sizeable portion of their private cloud would go unused. By extending their private cloud with extra capacity in the public cloud during peak usage periods—a technique known as cloudbursting—enterprises could ensure high performance levels at a lower cost without compromising security.

Which one’s right for you?

As you can see, choosing the right cloud for the job depends on the type of application you have in mind. To give you the most flexibility in the future, look for cloud solutions that support standards like OpenStack and popular hypervisors like VMware’s vSphere. That way, Towner will be able to integrate public and private cloud environments more easily when the need arises.

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October 30 2015

With Cloud, You Can Weather Any Storm

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog cloud, Cloud Communications, mitel

The month of December brings with it the official end of the hurricane season and the beginning of an equally formidable threat, Old Man Winter. Hurricanes, blizzards, ice storms—it’s enough to send a chill down the strongest network backbone.

That’s because natural disasters can test even the strongest business continuity plans. Power outages can shut down an entire data center, flooding can compromise copper lines and strong winds can knock out wireless towers. Yes, Mother Nature has a knack for whipping up the perfect storm where enterprise communications are concerned.

Just look at last year’s record-breaking winter or, going back a few years, to Hurricane Sandy.

74% of businesses affected by Sandy were closed for at least one full day.

Another 44% of those businesses stayed closed for over a week. Imagine not being able to send or receive calls from customers for an entire week. Could your business survive an extended outage like that?

It’s not that enterprises don’t recognize the importance of having a disaster recovery plan in place. It’s just that they have it in the wrong place.

More than half of enterprises locate their disaster/backup systems in the same physical location as their primary system.

That will afford them protection in the event of a hardware failure, sure, but not against natural disasters like flooding, fires or storm-related outages.

In a bit of irony, it turns out that the safest place to be in a storm is the cloud. Moving IT and communications into a geo-redundant cloud provides a safe haven against natural disasters. So long as your employees have an Internet connection, they can continue to access their unified communications (UC)—phone, email, IM, videoconferencing, collaborative apps—from home, even if your office is literally underwater.

Moving functions to the cloud is typically seen as a cost-oriented move to reduce capex and minimize opex, but it’s increasingly being used for its built-in disaster recovery features as well. Building a premise-based UC solution can be expensive; building two of them in different locations even more so. With a cloud-based UC service, there is no disruption to business continuity during an emergency—everything works just the same in the office, at home or on the road because it is the same.

The problem with disasters is that we rarely see them coming. But you can plan ahead, and cloud-based communications are a smart way to make your critical business communications disaster-proof. After all, nobody wants to leave their customers or employees out in the cold for days.

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October 6 2015

One Destination: The Cloud

jtowner@townerkc.com Blog Cloud Communications, Growth, mitel, Telecom

As businesses and organizations look for cost savings, options to replace outdated legacy telecom systems and innovative ways to manage business growth, they are realizing that cloud communications provide new opportunities.

According to Gigaom, by 2020, North American companies will have over 27 million employees using hosted communications tools with the European market not far behind. And Towner Communications has a big piece of that hosted communications market—in 2015, we were named the #1 global market share leader in cloud communications for business, powering 1.6 million connections.

According to our research there are 10 major reasons companies are moving to cloud communications. The top reasons include cost savings, increased flexibility, increased scalability, and easier/fast deployment of applications and infrastructure. Find out the other top reasons by checking out our blog post. You can also explore seven key factors of whether or not your business should move communications to the cloud by downloading our paper “How Cloud Communications is Opening up Possibilities (and Floor Space).”

Here’s what Towner Communication hosted customers are saying about why they chose to move to a hosted solution:

“At Bancroft, our strategic goals are to become more agile, more affordable and more innovative. Mitel aligned with our company goals and has helped us unify our communications company-wide. Moving to the cloud allows us to see significant cost savings and be more agile.” – Fina Nash, VP of Information Technology, Bancroft

Read Bancroft’s story >

“When Mitel presented its cloud solution and the flexibility it provides, I realized it was the way for GPA to go moving forward.” —Mac McIntyre, VP of Technology, Group & Pension Administrators (GPA)

Read GPA’s story >

“The reliability, value and flexibility of our Mitel Cloud solution is a perfect fit for a growing startup.” – Warren Smith, Founder, Sacramento Republic Football Club LLC “The reliability, value and flexibility of our Mitel Cloud solution is a perfect fit for a growing startup.” —Warren Smith, Founder, Sacramento Republic Football Club LLC

Ready Sacramento Republic Football Club’s story >

“Our phone system is crucial and mission critical, especially when it comes to making 911 calls if necessary. It’s important to have a system that works well and is reliable.” —Don Ringelstein, Director of Technology, West Aurora School District

Read West Aurora School District’s story >

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How You Can Shave an Hour from Your Workday with Team Collaboration in Just Five Minutes

1. Stop checking multiple messaging apps (Save 40 minutes per day)

2. Reach colleagues right away (Save 30 minutes per day)

3. Don’t juggle other people’s calendars (Save time and your sanity)

4. Have the answers now—and not when you’re back in the office (Save time, gas and customer relationships)

Learn more about Towner Communications and the MiTeam cloud collaboration suite >

Cloud-Mobile

For industry reaction to the news, read the original UC Strategies article T-Mobile and Mitel Introduce ‘Cloud & Clear’ by Blair Pleasant.