Virtual MCD is the first real-time voice application designed for the VMware vSphere 4 platform.
As a virtual appliance, Virtual MCD is a software package download that runs on VMware vSphere 4, enabling customers to access and install Mitel's call control software. The solution enables customers to consolidate Mitel's voice applications alongside non-voice business applications in the data centre. This results in the potential for: capital savings due to the reduction in server hardware and real estate; operational savings with the reduction in power and server provisioning costs; as well as productivity improvements and resource efficiencies in data centre management and risk mitigation for business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
Mitel and VMware say they already have a number of joint customers that have deployed Virtual MCD including Ashford Borough Council in the UK. These customer sites consist of users ranging from 30 to more than 2,000.
Virtual MCD is the latest application Mitel has introduced in the Mitel Virtual Solutions software portfolio. The next phase will include Mitel Applications Suite (MAS) and Mitel Border Gateway (MBG) as virtual appliances built using VMware Studio to be released 60 days after Virtual MCD.
In addition to MCD, Mitel Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced, Mitel Contact Center Solutions and Mitel Enterprise Manager are VMware Ready applications. The VMware Ready Program is a VMware co-branding program for qualified partner products.
"For some time now businesses have been moving toward datacenter virtualization and unified communications deployments on two separate planes," said Stephen Beamish, vice-president business development, Mitel. "Up until today, businesses around the world and of all sizes have wished these two worlds would connect as the cost savings, consolidation and significant improvement in efficiencies would be extremely consequential to business operations. That is why Mitel and VMware spent more than 18 months cracking the code on making the deployment of real-time voice a virtualized application deployable like any other application in the datacenter. Our successes are now being experienced and applauded around the world as customers start executing and benefiting from the deployment of Mitel Virtual Solutions in their datacenters."
"Virtualizing voice applications is a natural next step as customers work to consolidate more and more of their critical datacenter workloads," said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances, VMware. "We're excited to partner with Mitel in order to help advance the benefits of virtualization to a broader set of business applications."