The company says that with Mitel Mobility for BlackBerry MVS 5 , companies can make their staff more accessible through their work phone number and keep cellular calling costs under control. Calls made through BlackBerry MVS are routed through Mitel Communications Director (MCD) which helps with adherence to company policies and enables savings on long-distance and international roaming charges. Employees also benefit from the convenience of a single work phone number shared between their desk phone and BlackBerry smartphone. Employees can be more reachable through their work phone number and can even enjoy the convenience of extension dialing from their BlackBerry smartphone.
The combined Mitel and BlackBerry solution offers seamless handoff between devices within the user's personal ring group, moving calls without restrictions to and from their desk phone, BlackBerry smartphone, home phone, or soft phone. It is also easy to use since incoming calls ring all devices simultaneously and employees can access BlackBerry MVS and Mitel's business communications features using a familiar interface.
"Through membership in the BlackBerry Alliance Program and the use of the new PBX interoperability platform that is now available with BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5, Mitel has developed and certified interoperability between BlackBerry MVS and Mitel Communications Director for their customers," said Jeff McDowell, senior vice president at Research In Motion. "Organizations running a Mitel communications system can now use BlackBerry smartphones as wireless extensions of their deskphones to make employees more accessible while away from their desks and take advantage of potential savings on long distance and international calling charges."
Mobile workers can take advantage of voice over Wi-Fi calling available through BlackBerry MVS 5 to extend their reachability where cellular networks are not available, and reduce overall roaming and wireless charges. The Mitel solution enables BlackBerry smartphone users to take full advantage of Mitel business communications features without the need for a desk phone.
"Making and taking desk phone calls on a BlackBerry smartphone is a simple yet powerful concept and we see great opportunity for our customers to leverage the native BlackBerry experience and Wi-Fi capabilities with BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 integrated with Mitel Communications Director. This can lead to greater gains in responsiveness, productivity, and cost savings across their organizations," said Stephen Beamish, vice-president of marketing and business development at Mitel. "The BlackBerry platform made it easy for us to extend the Mitel unified communications experience in a secure and intuitive way on BlackBerry smartphones."
One of the advantages of Mitel's voice virtualization strategy is the ability for IT managers to consolidate and combine Mitel and BlackBerry applications into a single virtual environment, bridging the gap between fixed and wireless telephony applications. MCD, BlackBerry MVS, and other business applications can be run simultaneously on the same server, enabling customers to better leverage their existing investment and use Mitel to connect to third-party telephony systems.
Mitel Mobility for BlackBerry MVS 5 is based on MCD 4.2. BlackBerry MVS 5 is available today in North America from value-added resellers (VARs).