Chicago Bears Take a Page From Mitel's UC Playbook

By Brian Boguhn
Updated: June 14, 2011

Chicago Bears Take a Page From Mitel's UC Playbook

Even in the world of professional football, there is a need for scalable and seamless communications across an entire organization. On June 2, 2011, Mitel, a leading provider of unified communications and collaboration software solutions (UCC) announced that the NFL’s Chicago Bears had selected Mitel’s Freedom architecture to address such a need.

How does Mitel’s Freedom Architecture Help the Bears?

With multiple offices and staff members either travelling or working remotely, the Bears saw a need to have unified communications between these parts of their organization. The flexibility of the Freedom architecture works with the infrastructure the Bears currently have in place, so there is no need for a turnover in their technological framework. All members of the organization can stay in contact no matter where they are, a singular business continuity strategy is established, and the platform can be scaled to the needs of the Bears. By using the Mitel solution, the Bears also will be able to bring all voice applications into their planned VMware datacenter.

What does the Mitel Solution Consist of?

The Mitel solution is made up of 4 distinct parts:

  • Mitel Communications Director – makes sure calls are never missed, regardless of where in the world a user might be.
  • Mitel Unified Communicator Advanced – from a single collaboration portal, users in the organization are provided with a corporate directory that includes rich presence information, instant message, and visual voice-mail.
  • Mitel Contact Center Solutions – providing a visual queue so that ticket agents can see how long customers have been waiting, allowing agents to assist fans more quickly and efficiently.
  • An Ethernet networking solution from Extreme Networks that integrates with the Mitel solution.

The End Result?

Stephen Beamish, Mitel’s vice-president of corporate marketing and strategic alliances, sums it up best: “By deploying our solution, (the Chicago Bears) have been able to leverage their existing infrastructure and extend the in-office experience anywhere to connect the entire organization. It also allows (the Bears) to grow as the business needs evolve.”
If your company is looking to accomplish something similar to what the Bears have done, the Mitel product is worth investigating.
 

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