Siemens debuts Easy-to Use Open Communications Platforms for small businesses - News - CH/FR- Open Communications From Siemens
Munich, Dec 02, 2008
Siemens Debuts Easy-to-Use Open Communications Platform Designed and Priced for Small Businesses – Widgets Bring Communications to Your Desktop
HiPath® OpenOffice® Entry Edition for up to 30 users offers integration of dual-mode cellular/WiFi mobile devices and desktop telephony functionality
In small businesses, staff can be highly mobile and sometimes hard to reach, frustrating customers and associates alike. Communication breakdowns can result in large inefficiencies and lost business opportunities that small enterprises can hardly afford. To help them maximize efficiency and realize their fullest potential, Siemens Enterprise Communications has prepared the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition. This is made possible through the connection of dual-mode phones with one number dialing. Additionally, a widgets-based suite of applications creates an intuitive graphical user interface that gives users desktop access to the most important telephony functions, such as address books, voicemail management and status-dependent call forwarding at the click of a mouse button.
With the full telephony capabilities, advanced communications features and easy-to-use interface of the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition, small business personnel can gain productivity and cost-savings benefits to sharpen their competitive edge and improve market responsiveness. This powerful yet affordable communications package provides a fully featured private branch exchange (PBX) as well as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based Internet telephony. It supports home workers as well as on-premise wireless mobility for workers on-the-go, by providing them with one single phone number.
The dual-mode capabilities of the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition offer one-number WiFi phone access while users are in the office, shop or warehouse and cellular access when they are off-premise – all from the same device and on a single number. This kind of mobile productivity is characteristic of the HiPath OpenOffice unified communications product family and provides a first important step toward unified communications for small businesses.
Impressive savings potential
Not only does this help save expensive cellular phone charges but it also helps make owners and staff much more accessible to customers and associates. A study by Insignia Research found that workers waste 3.6 hours a week on average because they cannot collaborate easily with co-workers. At nearly 10 percent of a full-time workweek, those hours could be easily reclaimed by deploying the HiPath Open Office Entry Edition in a small business.
Extensive functionality
One of its biggest productivity features is the myPortal Entry application that runs on a PC desktop and is based on the innovative widget technology. Firms and users alike can control their voice communications more effectively, more creatively and more individually than ever. With just a click of the mouse, they can access such advanced features as:
• Call journal, for all calls and reminders, to help keep track of their contacts and call histories
• Directory access, for fast lookups and point-and-click dialling, import of Outlook contact information
• Easy voicemail management, to help reduce the time needed to access and deal with messages
• Status-based call diversion, so users can control how their calls are routed and easily divert them to voicemail, an administrator or some other number without having to pick up the phone
• Call control that pops up a window on the user’s PC with the calling number or the name if it matches with the users directory – no need for a high spec display phone
• Team function allows users to send their team colleagues pre-defined text messages and redirect calls to any number to reach.employees who are out of the office
An open way for customers and partners to add value
The myPortal Entry feature of the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition runs on the Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is an open development environment that Yahoo! created to help innovative web designers and programmers launch small, useful software applications called “widgets.” Customers and partners can use these widgets to tailor desktop applications and integrate communications into their business processes. Siemens Enterprise Communications provides additional support to these developers with a community website called OpenScape Central and a Software Development Kit (SDK).
In keeping with Siemens Enterprise Communications' Open Communications architecture and philosophy, the SDK allows developers to use standard Internet programming languages like HTTP and XML to craft business-specific applications that can customize the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition for special vertical markets.
“The HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition appeals to small innovative businesses that want their employees to be available anywhere and their way of working to be open and intuitive,” said Michael Trotz, Product Manager of the HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition. “The system enables them to gain all the one-number accessibility, productivity and collaborative benefits of open, IP-based communications in an affordable, easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy package. In fact, the potential gains in productivity and efficiency are great enough that the return on the investment can be measured in months not years.”
For resellers who focus on serving SMEs, HiPath Open Office Entry Edition also opens up new ways to add value for their customers. By providing open interfaces such as HTTP and making it so much easier to manage telephony functions, savvy IT resellers can thus give their customers tailor-made applications that dovetail perfectly with their business processes.
The HiPath OpenOffice Entry Edition will be available from November 28, 2008, through indirect and direct sales channels. Pricing for a basic system starts at EUR 980.