What’s New with UNIVERGE BLUE? Now Announcing General Availability for U.S. Partners

Posted by Marc Hebner on May 20, 2020May 27, 2020 Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Education, Enterprise, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Unified Communications Tagged ccaas, Channel partners selling, cloud back up services, cloud services, collaboration software, Frost and Sullivan, INTERMEDIA, NEC, UCaaS, UNIVERGE BLUE

Last month, NEC announced the launch of the new generation of our UNIVERGE BLUE™ cloud communications portfolio.

Today, I am extremely excited to share that UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE are now generally available for NEC’s U.S. Business Channel Partner Community. This is phase 1 of a global rollout during 2020 that will ultimately include partners around the globe by 2021.

What is NEC UNIVERGE BLUE™ CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE™ ENGAGE?

Businesses need the ability to communicate and collaborate from anywhere at any time, both internally and externally. They need tools that are easy to deploy and use, and provide users with an integrated experience. The need for a flexible and adaptable solution to support a remote workforce will extend beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic and we built this solution with this in mind.

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE are born-in-the-cloud solutions designed specifically for businesses of all sizes and the channel partners who serve them. Built on innovative and proprietary technology, the solutions are elegant, reliable and easy to deploy, while remaining highly scalable and extremely cost-effective.

Our cloud-based unified communications platform, UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT, combines a full-featured cloud-based phone system, team chat, video conferencing and online meeting plus file backup, sync and share, all available to users through desktop, web and mobile applications. CONNECT helps improve the communications and collaboration of businesses, while being easy for channel partners to sell, install and support.

Our fully featured Cloud Contact Center as a Service solution (CCaaS), UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE, combines robust functionality with carrier-grade reliability and world-class deployment and support services. It’s designed to fit business needs from the small, single channel to the large and sophisticated omni-channel environment, and can help any business differentiate from the competition where it matters most – the customer experience.

Brought to Market Exclusively through NEC’s Business Partner Community

NEC prides itself on its commitment to building strong relationships with our channel partner community and delivering true innovation, and our new generation of UNIVERGE BLUE strengthens this commitment.

Last month, we spoke with industry analyst Elka Popova, Vice President at Frost & Sullivan, about the news. “NEC has the opportunity to accelerate the conversion of its vast and entrenched customer base to cloud services such as UCaaS, CCaaS, meetings, and file sync and share,” said Popova. “The partnership will also greatly improve NEC’s and its dealers’ competitive positions as they will be able to capitalize on the ongoing customer migrations to cloud services. This will result in new revenue opportunities, more predictable revenue streams and stickier customer relationships for NEC and its channel partners.”

Available today through NEC’s Business Partner community, UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE complement NEC’s existing offerings, while creating new opportunities for partners to earn increased revenue through new programs designed to facilitate deeper customer relationships.

NEC Channel Partners can choose between three different go-to-market models:

Customer Ownership
Revenue Share
Agency Model

The Customer Ownership and Revenue Share models are now available for Channel Partners located in the United States, with the Agency Model being available in June. For NEC’s loyal Canadian Channel Partners, a launch date will be announced very soon.

Here’s What Our Partners are Saying

NEC gave a handful of exclusive partners early access to UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE. The partners were able to test the product first-hand and get it in front of select customers. In just the past month, NEC has received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Here’s what they had to say:

“Forerunner Technologies is extremely excited about NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and the NEC/Intermedia relationship. Our clients have a pent-up demand for this dynamic delivery model and the migration to the cloud with advanced collaboration applications. This model is unique in comparison to other UCaaS offerings and allows Solution Integrators better ability to control the end user experience while keeping costs in line. Congratulations to NEC on this move!” – Paul Diesu, CEO of Forerunner Technologies
“We’re excited to take part in the full launch of the new NEC UNIVERGE BLUE! This will be a turning point in the future of NEC UCaaS solutions and sales, and looking forward to presenting the fresh new look to our current customers and new prospects.” – Scott Ellman, Director of Sales, Advanced Communication Solutions
“NEC Blue delivers a complete public, private and hybrid cloud offering to NEC SI Partners. The NEC Blue allows the SI to deliver this offering in an Ownership, Revenue Share or Agency Model. NEC Blue Team provides Inside Sale Support, Marketing and technical support to the SI, allowing the SI to engage in any opportunity. DTC has engaged NEC Blue Team in multiple call center opportunities. NEC Blue can provide a simple to very advance call center solution. A truly SI centric model.” – Gordon Maccani, President, Digital Telecommunication Corp

I couldn’t be more excited for NEC and our partners as we deepen our roots in the UCaaS and CCaaS markets and help our customers transition to the cloud. So come join us, it’s going to be a fun ride! For more information on UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE, visit http://univergeblue.com. Or, if you’re interested in learning more about our Channel Partner Program, reach out to us via the form below.

Become a Partner

We welcome your interest in our products, solutions and services. If you have any questions about the Channel Partner Program, please submit your query below.

What’s the best backup solution for my environment?

Posted by Mike Mitsch on February 20, 2020February 20, 2020 Posted in Cloud, Education, Enterprise, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Uncategorized Tagged BaaS, backup as a service, cloud back up services, cloud services, data backup, data storage, NEC

In May 2019, a ransomware attack held the city of Baltimore’s computers hostage, preventing its citizens from paying water bills or parking tickets. City leaders say that fully restoring systems takes months and even then, data may be corrupted or unusable. In efforts to employ more technology in city infrastructure, cyberhackers are infiltrating city operations more than ever before.
If you’re reading this, chances are highly likely that you’re unsatisfied with your current backup solution. According to CommVault, the statistics around backups and data restores reveal:
• Only 57% of IT managers have a backup solution in place, of which 75% were not able to restore their data.
• 81% of ransomware victims felt confident in their ability to restore completely from backups, but only 42% could restore their data fully.
• Sixty percent of organizations shut down after a data loss disaster and the average cost of downtime is $250,000 per hour.
Perhaps you’re all too familiar with these statistics and are wondering how to implement a quality backup solution that works for your budget and environment.
Answer these questions and read on to determine the best backup solution for your environment.

How Much Am I Really Paying for Protection?
Consider the true cost of backups and disaster recovery for your organization. You may be paying for hardware and software licensing, network hardware infrastructure, management costs, disaster recovery location, environment management and more. How much are you paying in staff to manage everything and training on the skills required for equipment maintenance? Are you paying for full-time use of expertise or technology that you only use part of the time? Can you put a cost on unreliable backups, slow backups and restores, low service levels, downtime or noncompliance?

NEC Solution Simplifies Backup Complexity – NEC/B&A Case Study:

UNIVERGE BLUE Backup as a Service Case Study: B & A from InteractiveNEC

How Complex is My Environment?

If your IT environment keeps changing, includes multiple applications, legacy systems or other complex infrastructure, you’re already familiar with the cost of owning several different software and hardware licenses. Changes in public policy may require technology updates or backup reliability to maintain compliance with new regulations. Data loss, intrusion and cyber threats add another layer of complexity requiring continual management, monitoring and updates. You may also manage this environment on your own, in reactive mode and in silos, increasing the cost and inefficiency of your IT staff.

NEC Backup as a Service Reduces Administrative Tasks, Helping IT Departments Help Their Organizations

What’s Your Data Worth? from InteractiveNEC

The Benefits of Backup as a Service (BaaS)

While considering the cost of adding a full-service disaster recovery solution, consider how Backup as a Service creates a better IT employee experience. By implementing a fully-managed and hosted system, NEC manages all the data, licensing, network and infrastructure, mitigating the risk of data loss and increasing your IT staff’s efficiency.

BaaS also adds to a better customer experience. Complex environments may require maintenance to ensure a fully compliant data center. With NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS solution, your employees have data when they need it, without fail, in fully regulated data centers with fully compliant software.

Why Choose NEC for BaaS?

Regardless of your business size or the complexity of your data and storage environment, NEC has a solution for you. NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS is a full-service backup infrastructure, fully managed and at a lower cost of ownership. In fact, your organization will no longer be responsible for maintaining the infrastructure or backups unless you choose to do so. UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS also incorporates the cost of disaster recovery, creating a cost-effective, secure solution. When your business needs a data restore, NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS is available at a moment’s notice:

Built and optimized on NEC Storage infrastructure
Reliable, managed backup and recovery available anytime
Fully staffed network operations center to manage the process
Daily or monthly performance and status reports
AEC 128-bit encryption for virtual servers, physical servers or database applications
Personalized retention and recovery time objectives

NEC will also offer a personal consultation with your organization to accurately assess your current backup solution and determine if a new one is needed.

NEC’s UNIVEGRE BLUE BaaS Deployment Options

With NEC, BaaS is available from self-service to fully managed backup and disaster recovery services:

NEC appliance in your local data center (on and off premise and fully managed): Your servers will be backed up to the appliance and then sent to the off premises NEC cloud. Your organization pays for the appliance and it can be self-managed or fully managed by NEC.
Backup to the NEC cloud (fully hosted): Your existing servers are directed to backup to NEC’s cloud over a secure link. Your organization only pays for the space and services you need.

In a fully hosted system, NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS solution delivers security and performance and is powered by industry-leading CommVault® backup software. The infrastructure is placed in highly secure and compliant IronMountain® data centers offering fully automated, cost-effective and easily scalable backup solutions. Network operations and restores are available 7x24x365. The system integrates with multiple applications and legacy systems including SAP, CRM systems and more. This scenario is best for complex storage and data environments such as healthcare, hospitality and education.

The on-premises appliance is built using the optimal NEC infrastructure platform to meet the requirement. This includes NEC’s HYDRAstor Physical and Virtual appliances, as well as NEC’s Storage Rich Servers configured with the appropriate software to easily handle the needs of SMB to enterprise businesses.

Is Your Backup Solution Slow or Outdated?

To protect your data, ensure a positive customer experience and create a more efficient employee experience, it may be time to consider a better backup solution. With enormous amounts of data that are changing at rapid speed, tape backups could be outdated as quickly as a backup is finished. Migrations, maintenance and unplanned downtime can disrupt production and reduce the efficiency of your IT staff. Inconsistent and often incomplete backups can cost your organization, including hurting the bottom line dramatically.

NEC’s HYDRAstor, recognized as 2015’s Best of Interop in Storage and with a Network Products Guide Gold Award in Storage Solutions, is widely regarded as the most scalable and fastest dedupe appliance. NEC’s powerful award-winning infrastructure and technology is available and customizable for your IT environment.

Learn more at https://www.necam.com/Cloud/BaaS/ or schedule a no obligation consultation with an NEC backup expert to determine which solution fits your needs and budget. Just fill out the form below, and we will get back to you soon.

Tech Advancements in 2019 and Looking Ahead to 2020

Posted by Bryan Williams on December 30, 2019January 9, 2020 Posted in Analytics, Biometrics, Contact Center, Education, Enterprise, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Law Enforcement, Retail, Security, Servers and Storage, Software-Defined Networking, Unified Communications Tagged BaaS, cloud back up services, cloud backup, cloud services, facial recognition, facial recognition solutions, Government, NEC, sdwan, UCaaS, UNIVERGE BLUE

Cloud computing, security and collaboration top the list of enterprise technology trends in 2019. Gartner estimated early in the year that cloud services would grow 17.5 percent over 2019 and infrastructure services would be the fastest growing segment. In 2019 and 2020, business leaders must consider the cost of scalability, communications adaptability and how to help increase efficiency for IT staff.

NEC led the charge with a banner year of new releases, updates and development in the cloud computing and unified communications market.

As we close out the year, let’s review technology trends firmly established in 2019 and what to expect from NEC in 2020.

Reduce the Complexity of Data Center Management

A 2019 Spiceworks survey found that 46% of enterprise organizations planned to adopt hyperconverged infrastructure solutions by 2020. With the complexity of datacenter applications, virtualization and other cloud-based services, IT staff is challenged with managing it all. Each application or service typically involves installing its own server, requiring more storage, networking and skill requirements. Inefficient resource utilization and disorganization leads to unnecessary purchases, the inability to innovate and increased downtime.

In 2019, NEC released a new HCI solution powered by Scale Computing’s HC3 software. HCI consolidates and streamlines IT processes, bringing the hardware costs down and making management easier through one virtualized system and interface. A more stable and simplified environment means that IT staff can be proactive, with far less downtime, and the ability to scale easier.

Solve Communications and Collaboration Challenges

Unified communications helps businesses of all sizes to collaborate from across the globe. As more employees work from remote locations, team communications must be adaptable and easily accessible for reliable availability and a better employee experience. Unified communications requires technology that is easily integrated into current IT environments, cost effective, flexible and scalable.

NEC continues to be a world leader in UC research and development. In 2019, NEC was proud to announce the latest evolution of UNIVERGE-SV9000 series for communications and collaboration.

Securely Prioritize UC Network Traffic

When enterprises rely on unified communications, they are challenged with delivering cost-effective bandwidth while helping critical applications coexist securely and efficiently. In 2019, NEC announced a partnership with Infovista that combines Infovista’s Software defined WAN (SDWAN) capabilities with NEC’s software defined unified communications services. This partnership helps to reduce WAN operating costs while delivering optimal voice quality and dynamic routing of voice traffic based on real-time network traffic and conditions. By leveraging multiple WAN links and centralizing management, application performance is safeguarded and operational efficiency is improved.

Move to More Cloud-Based Solutions

2019 saw the increase in use of as-a-service options including infrastructure, unified communications, collaboration and backups, and this increase will continue throughout the New Year. In 2019, NEC expanded the UNIVERGE BLUE cloud portfolio to include Team Collaboration and BaaS (backup as a service).

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Team Collaboration improves workforce communications and cooperation, anytime and from anywhere. By simplifying the complexity of voice, video, screen sharing and meetings, the employee experience is enhanced and employee retention improves.

BaaS solutions can reduce the likelihood of data loss and save money on the cost of backup infrastructure. Built on NEC’s powerful distributed grid platform, HYDRAstor®, and secured in Iron Mountain® data centers, this backup as a service solution securely backs up onsite data centers cost-effectively with advanced encryption and easy scalability.

NEC continues to deliver excellence in cloud computing, business continuity, infrastructure and unified communications.

Tech Trends to Look for in 2020

Research shows that IT budgets will continue to increase in 2020, much of it to be spent on new technology as well as hardware replacement. According to a survey of 1,000 North American and European companies conducted by Spiceworks, 44% of businesses plan to increase IT spending in 2020 (vs. 38% in 2019). Gartner also predicts increased worldwide IT spending in 2020 with a growth rate of 3.7% overall.

Here’s a look at some of the trends for 2020 and beyond.

Cloud Computing and Everything as a Service

Installations of cloud-based computing will continue to grow at a record pace as organizations become more familiar and comfortable with the advantages it offers to a mobile workforce. Cloud infrastructure is maturing beyond being separated into public, hosted private and on premises buckets to instead becoming more portable and mobile as well as more standardized.

Spending-wise, Spiceworks’ IT spending survey found that hosted and cloud-based services are expected to make up about 22-23% of the total IT budget in 2020 (for NA and European companies). Online backup and recovery services will represent the second largest budget allocation in cloud services, with larger companies allocating more money toward desktop-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service than smaller organizations.

Edge Computing and IoT

Another leading-edge trend that is gaining momentum is edge computing. Defined as distributed computing, edge computing moves computation and data storage closer to where these services are needed, improving latency and saving bandwidth. Spiceworks reports that 68% of large companies plan to use edge computing by the end of 2020.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are no longer part of science fiction. Spiceworks estimates that businesses using AI-powered tech is going to triple by 2021. As an example, AI/ML can be used to help reduce costs by increasing the efficiency of cloud computing. Workplace efficiency can also be improved by using AI to sort through volumes of data to find the information that is most pertinent. AI also is making its way into collaboration and communication within the enterprise. Both internal and external teams continue to become dispersed, so better and more intelligent collaboration is needed to provide information and insight for decision-making.

Facial Recognition

NEC has paved the way for the use of facial recognition in aviation, government entities and retail and in 2020, use of NEC facial recognition will continue to expand across all industries including healthcare, education and hospitality to increase security and improve the customer experience.

NEC Face Recognition Technology Ranks First in 2019 NIST Accuracy Testing

In retail, NEC facial recognition will continue to be expanded as it’s used to personalize the online and in-store experiences for shoppers. Retailers also use it to fight retail crime and shoplifting.

Several new applications for using facial recognition in healthcare are in development. For example, rather than waiting in line to be seen, a virtual assistant can scan a face and assign a patient to a doctor. In education, administrators will be able to take attendance with the help of facial recognition. Facial recognition will be used to enhance identity management and verification systems within healthcare, education and hospitality. NEC’s goal by developing cross-industry facial recognition solutions is to help businesses enhance their employee and customer experience by enabling seamless, frictionless, and more efficient environments by automating operations with this technology.

Star Alliance and NEC Sign Partnership to Enhance Passenger Experience

Technology will continue to improve in hospitality, including security and access, payment authorization and customer service. Hotels, cruises, airports and restaurants are using facial recognition to personalize the customer experience, including using their face to pay for a meal, check into a flight, get recommendations or receive special offers.

Which of these trends does your organization plan to embrace in the coming year? Talk to an NEC expert to learn more about our award-winning research and development and we can customize a solution for your technology needs.

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The 3 R’s In Disaster Preparedness

Posted by Helen D'Antoni on February 6, 2019February 6, 2019 Posted in Analytics, Education, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Servers and Storage Tagged BaaS, cloud back up services, Critical IT, disaster preparedness, Disaster Recovery plan, infrastructure failure, Iron Mountain data center, on-site recovery, UCaaS

Few want to be ‘that person’ … the one whose phone rings first when some aspect of the organization’s critical infrastructure fails. Hoping for the best is all well and good. Even planning for the worst only goes so far. There are just too many variables in preventing unexpected outages to be totally failsafe. Yes, there are some situations that can be planned for. But the severity of even known concerns can mean the difference between a manageable and challenging scenario.

When disaster does strike, it is all about recovering to a state of normalcy quickly and minimizing any impact to the end user experience. This applies to almost every aspect in risk management, whether it be for a physical location or operational infrastructure.

Here at NEC, disaster preparedness can be broken down into 3 core competencies – otherwise known as the 3 R’s.

Resiliency
Fully redundant architecture that supports and runs in lockstep with mission critical infrastructure.

Information must be protected yet accessible before and after the restoration of essential services.

Our high availability infrastructure works to deliver a multi-tiered resilient environment that recovers quickly should disaster strike through the use of our Five9s Fault Tolerant servers, disaster recovery software and SAN and Scale-Out Grid Storage solutions.

Our Fault Tolerant servers and ExpressCluster® software are viable options for effective redundancy protection of physical security applications and possible hardware, software and site infrastructure failure.

Robustness
Simplified environments based on stable, flexible foundations that elevate security and responsiveness.

To alleviate the risk of data loss and the expense of investing in backup management infrastructure, third-party hosting is a viable alternative while SDN solutions deliver greater oversight for companies interested in keeping control in-house.

NEC is uniquely positioned to deliver Backup-as-a-Service. As the first technology infrastructure provider to join Iron Mountain’s Data Center Marketplace, we can help protect and deliver accessibility of the data stores we host through Iron Mountain’s secure, compliant and energy efficient data centers in North Virginia (VA10) and West Pennsylvania (WPA1).

With so much depending on the network, our software defined networking software and switches can deliver granular, end-to-end network visibility and administrative insight from one central point to promote continuous supervision and greater operability.

Relevance
Deliverables that best adapt to the needs of internal and external users through optimized experiences.

For optimum protection of those on-site and within related or nearby offices, emergency protocols can be a vital life line.

NEC’s highly accurate facial recognition technology provide better situational awareness through the use of identification matching software and video surveillance for greater on-site safety and more appropriate course of action.

Where large numbers of people must be reached quickly, our mass communications solutions can send voice, email and text messages or a combination of all so people stay informed and remain vigilant.

Our enterprise security solutions provide a comprehensive package of options that range from streamlining visitor handling, providing employees with a secure environment through physical and visual safeguards and helping to make your critical processes highly available.

Don’t wait for that next phone call or incidence. Let NEC provide a roadmap on critical IT, communications and on-site recovery that will help your organization’s preparedness in disaster recovery.

Get started today.