Mitel plays into BYOD trend with UC apps for Apple's iPhone, iPad

Employee-owned devices increasingly are becoming the reality for enterprise IT departments, and, with 91 percent of Fortune 500 companies testing or deploying iOS devices, Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone or iPad, research firm Gartner says the trend is an "unstoppable train."

Mitel releases a UC app for devices running iOS.

Unified communications software solutions provider Mitel, which sees the increasing adoption of iOS devices as a major business opportunity to expand in the small and medium enterprise segment, today launched Mitel Unified Communicator Advanced software, extending the reach of its Freedom UC platform to Apple mobile devices, allowing IT managers to accommodate the BYOD phenomenon.

The newest iteration provides desktop and mobile users a single interface to access all of their Mitel communications capabilities, including voice, video, instant messaging, conferencing and presence.

Unified Communicator Advanced for iPhone and iPad, in combination with the Freedom architecture, allows employees and IT department to utilize existing infrastructure and devices of choice without having to purchase new equipment.

"We recognize that delivering unified communications software to the iOS platform for Apple products is essential to our customers," said Ron Wellard, executive vice president and general manager at Mitel Communications Solutions.

With the addition of the iOS software, Mitel's unified communications applications, which also work with RIM- and Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android-based mobile devices, are available across the majority of mobile devices in business environments.

Among the features available to iOS users:

• Search the corporate directory and click-to-dial from corporate contact list to place calls through the corporate network;
• Missed, dialed, and received calls;          
• Access to visual voicemail from office extension and the ability to manage messages by preference rather than sequence; and,
• Automatic updates of presence status and call routing preferences based on a users location, or time of day.

The UC Advanced Mobile for iOS is available to UC Advanced users in Apple's App Store.

For more:
- see this release

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