Windstream Enterprise has upgraded its Windstream Enterprise UCaaS Mitel platform, the company announced today.
The platform offers a UC solution that integrates voice, multi-media, unified messaging, mobility and other services onto a single platform.
UCaaS capabilities now exceed those available from premises-based UC solutions, according to the Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service report. Nevertheless, the study says that premises-based UC still accounts for about 70 percent of the offerings sold to mid-size and large enterprises.
Gartner said that the pace of UCaaS innovation is accelerating as vendors focus R&D resources on cloud delivery. IT application leaders must evaluate a fragmented UCaaS landscape to ensure their selected vendor matches their requirements. The Mitel platform was among the top ten UCaaS platforms on the recent IHS Markit UCaaS Scorecard, which was topped by 8×8 and RingCentral.
“Businesses of all sizes recognize that digital transformation is essential in a competitive environment,” said Joseph Harding, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Windstream Enterprise and Wholesale, in a prepared statement. “As a company pledged to help our customers make that transformation, Windstream Enterprise is committed to staying current on the latest trends and technologies, including those from partners who are best-in-breed in their industry”
Last year, Windstream announced that it was pairing its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) with its SD-WAN solution. The Windstream UCaaS portfolio is completely cloud-based, targeting business customers from SMBs to the enterprise.
The company has boasted of accelerating success on its UCaaS and SD-WAN solutions for more than the year. By utilizing SD-WAN as the underlying connectivity for UCaaS services, customers gain better control and performance important to the phone, contact center, chat, video and collaboration applications delivered by the cloud-based service, according to Windstream.