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Cloud Telephony Services Expand to Canada

By Melissa Warten
Contributing Writer

As the cloud descends closer to businesses here on Earth, it’s up to the organization to really take advantage of its numerous services as they continue to spread. With two new partners in Canada, the cloud is closer than ever.

IT World Canada recently reported that two new information and communication technology providers will be offering cloud-based telephony services to Canadian businesses. Mitel (News - Alert) Networks and Fujitsu America will be expanding their offerings into Canada. Fujitsu is expanding its Lync service, entitled Cloud Enterprise Communication Service (ECS) Connect, across North America.

Fujitsu’s (News - Alert) ECS Connect is aimed to serve enterprises of 1,500 seats or more, and includes all the functionality of an on-premise Lync service, with telephony integration and both audio and video conferencing options. It costs $13 to $17 per seat, depending on the capabilities desired and numbers needed for each business that employs the services. Fujitsu will sell ECS Connect directly, but is also in search of reselling partners. As part of the service, Fujitsu will assess the customer’s networks to ensure it can handle the solution, as well as calculate the return on investment the service can be expected to provide.

Fujitsu will be hosting the service out of two locations. One will be the company’s Quebec City innovation center which specializes in voice applications, and the other will be its new data center in Regina.

Jeff Stucker, unified communications director for Fujitsu America, said in a statement, “This [service] is especially valuable for enterprises that have bought Office 365 with enterprise voice licenses, because Microsoft (News - Alert) does not have the telco connections in their data center. Those licenses would need to be deployed on premise or in a hosted environment.”

The cloud is getting closer to us than ever, and businesses would be well advised to take advantage of all it has to offer.