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Take Your Unified Communications to the Cloud

Today’s businesses have customers and employees that expect reliable and secure communications from anywhere at any time. Unfortunately, building and maintaining this infrastructure can be cost-prohibitive. Cloud-based communication services are available but could put businesses in a bind paying for services they don’t use or limiting them to one-type of solution.

Small businesses and large enterprises need flexibility when investing in cloud computing. Enterprise businesses expect scalability that’s available when needed. Small businesses are limited in resources and require the ability to do more with less.

No matter the path: on premise, cloud or hybrid, NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE offers a dynamic and flexible delivery model that’s tailored to your business needs and built on our award-winning IT infrastructure.

Why Move to Cloud-Based Solutions?

Your customers, whether internal or external, desire an easily accessible, secure and responsive experience. Employees must be able to perform their duties effectively and rely on dependable technology to fully support a positive customer experience.

Organizations are challenged with implementing communication systems and technology that allows their employees to work together from anywhere at any time. The solution typically involves multiple types of software, infrastructure and other platforms across many locations. Complex system integrations and management can raise IT costs and limit the IT staff from enjoying a productive and efficient employee experience. With IT employees in reaction mode, the customer experience falters due to downtime or unavailable data.

Cloud-based solutions and unified communications streamline the employee experience while reducing costs and simplifying management. Employees have access to their data and systems via the internet or anywhere they have cell data coverage.

The challenge becomes deployment of these new solutions (legacy systems, reliability, security and cost) and choosing a technology that will continue to grow with the organization.

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE: Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

UCaaS provides tools for organizations choosing to move voice, mobility, messaging, chat, video collaboration and more into the cloud. Employee teams can communicate anywhere, at any time, on any device. As an enterprise-grade communications solution, UNIVERGE BLUE is cost-effective, built with the latest UC tools at the cost of a standard user license. Best of all, this solution is fully customizable so any business can scale up or down as needed. UCaaS replaces outdated communication systems and reduces the need for extended disaster recovery planning and resources.

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE delivers this solution while shouldering the burden of maintenance and upgrades, freeing your staff to focus on other business needs.

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE: Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

Meet your customer where they are by implementing a cloud-based contact center solution that can be accessed from anywhere. Empower agents to use social media, SMS, webchat, phone, video and more to provide an elevated customer experience. Customers speak to a real human, specifically chosen through CCaaS skills-based routing and, if needed, moves your high-priority customers to the front of the queue. Any size business can benefit from this solution that scales from 5 agents to 20,000.

Again, NEC manages and maintains the system 24/7/365 and business continuity and disaster recovery is built into the solution.

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE: Team Collaboration

Team Collaboration creates a digital workplace in the cloud by improving workforce and remote communications and cooperation. Voice, video, screen sharing, messaging, meetings and file sharing is accessed through a single dashboard on multiple devices at any location. Either used in real time, or off-line, all team members are kept connected and up to date as communications follows them to whatever device they’re using.

Simplifying collaboration and reducing the cost and complexity of multiple applications improves the employee experience and employee retention.

What Makes NEC UNIVERGE BLUE Better?

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE enables a phased approach to organizations moving to cloud as well as a flexible delivery model. Built on highly secure JITC-certified encryption technology and offering two layers of support, NEC’s innovative solutions and customizable approach to communications allows businesses to:

Improve the customer experience
Improve the employee experience
Reduce IT costs
Reduce risk
Simplify technology management
Improve productivity

NEC also has extensive expertise in the market with more than 120 years of experience across all environments. Our solutions integrate into your current environment and scale to where you want to be in the future. Our dynamic delivery model gives you the options of on premises, cloud, hybrid, public or private environments. Payment options are just as flexible, with capex, op-ex or a combination of both.

NEC’s Cloud services allows your organization to grow and deliver a unified, reliable and secure experience with minimal investment. Customize the solution that’s perfect for your organization. Contact an NEC Solutions Expert to learn more or download the UNIVERGE BLUE ebook.

Free Ebook

Reach Sky-High Communications

This ebook will help you understand how UNIVERGE BLUE can support your communications system while allowing your team to remain focused on what matters most—your business.

As any information technology (IT) professional knows, you need an IT infrastructure that’s secure and trustworthy, one that’s robust enough to achieve your current needs and agile enough to grow as a company expands. Well, the same can be said of an IT solutions partner.

Black Box Corporation is a leading technology solutions provider that’s helped its customers build, manage, optimize, and secure IT infrastructure for more than 40 years. Also, for the majority of that time, Black Box has been a trusted collaborator with NEC as a leading North American dealer of NEC solutions.

“NEC and Black Box’s relationship goes back 30 plus years,” said Mike McAndrew, CEO of Black Box Corporation. “Throughout that entire period, one of the key attributes that has lent itself to the success that we’ve had together is the clarity and commitment of the NEC team to the channel partner.”

McAndrew continued, “I think back to our first significant (UNIVERGE) 3C client. I got an email from one of the client representatives who remarked on how the Black Box and NEC teams were working together on a major cutover as if they were one company. And I was really proud of that note, because it was us working together, but in the client’s eyes we worked as a single unit.”

Recently, this partnership took a huge step forward as the two companies expanded their North American agreement into a global distribution channel.

“Essentially, we have two global companies that have been operating effectively outside of North America on their own,” said Larry Levenberg, vice president of NEC Corporation of America. “This agreement brings together new global capabilities for both companies.”

The new arrangement means that Black Box can now offer NEC’s unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solution, UNIVERGE 3C, to its global clients, as it has for its North American clients. UNIVERGE 3C integrates multiple media types to ensure that employees have the information they need anywhere, anytime, and from any device.

“Our clients are looking to simplify their IT and communications environment, while at the same time bring more capabilities to that environment relative to collaboration tools, network management, and other aspects. So, UCC has been a crown jewel for us,” said McAndrew.

NEC’s UCC solutions unleash productivity by combining IT and voice to facilitate mobility and “anywhere” communication. As more and more companies increase their global footprint, they require an IT infrastructure that is:

Agile enough to be accessed anywhere and evolve as needed
Resilient enough to handle the pressures of a global workforce
Secure enough to withstand the threats of today and whatever may come tomorrow

It’s an approach NEC calls Smart Enterprise.

“The commitment to a positive client experience from NEC and Black Box is really tremendous,” said McAndrew. “Listening to the clients and what their needs are and finding unique solutions for them is the hallmark of a successful channel partner, systems integrator, and partnership moving forward.”

For nearly four decades, NEC and Black Box have collaborated to provide North American companies with agile, resilient, secure, and united IT and voice solutions. This expanded agreement will ensure global availability to the powerful, converged business applications of UCC – solutions that empower a workforce from virtually anywhere.

“We have put together a very cohesive and full portfolio of solutions, and having an integrator like Black Box that can go out there and put all those pieces together, make the commitment and serve those clients both from a sales perspective and operations as well as installation really means a lot. I’m glad that our views are so closely aligned going forward, and I think we’re really going to see a lot of success in the future,” said Levenberg.

Tags: Univerge

NEC & Black Box: Enterprise IT Solutions on a Global Stage