Siemens Aims Unified Comms At Mid-sized Firms

Siemens Enterprise Communications, a provider of enterprise communications, today announced OpenScape Office MX, an all-in-one unified communications solution designed specifically to meet the communications needs of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). The product includes features designed to yield SMBs greater employee productivity, improved customer collaboration and reduced communication costs.

OpenScape Office MX is tailored specifically to the needs of businesses with up to 150 users. Following consultation with channel partners and customers, more than 50 improvements have been made to the product, the company said. Designed to work from within Microsoft Outlook, OpenScape Office MX enables users to access UC features such as drag-and-drop conferencing, call recording, and click-to-call from within their Outlook window. Users can now launch conference calls, check on the presence of their peers, control how, when and by whom they can be contacted at any given time and automatically update their voicemail based on their Outlook calendar.

OpenScape Office MX is the successor to HiPath OpenOffice ME and delivers voice, UC and critical data network capabilities in a single, user-friendly service application. Siemens noted customers wanting to upgrade from HiPath OpenOffice ME, the predecessor to OpenScape Office MX, can do so with a software upgrade requiring no changes to the hardware platform.

“We’ve found OpenScape Office MX is straightforward and requires little training, which helped us smoothly integrate the technology and get started easily,” said Wendy Marks, IT support and local area network (LAN) analyst at US-based Member Insurance Agency. “Even more importantly, it has helped us improve customer service in our contact centre by ensuring we never miss a call and customer questions are routed to the appropriate person in a timely manner. Efficiency benefits like these truly help us improve the way we do business.”

With OpenScape Office MX, Siemens also said its channel partners participating in the company’s Go Forward! Partner Programme can better serve SMB customers by deploying the system via a configurations wizard, intuitive interface for configuration changes and simpler deployment of remote support services with customer sites. They can also get access to promotions, including special upgrade and training options.

“In the development of OpenScape Office MX, we listened to the needs of our channel partners and the market,” said Eve Aretakis, executive vice president of voice and application platforms at Siemens Enterprise Communications. “In order to stay ahead of the curve, small and medium enterprises need to be able to offer dynamic and responsive customer service, without incurring significant expenditures. Our channel partners can offer the next generation of a highly advanced UC product that dramatically reduces installation time and is intuitive and easy to use to ultimately accelerate business communications.”