SAN FRANCISCO – Kelowna, BC-based hosting services provider RackForce Networks and Ottawa-based IP telecommunications solutions vendor Mitel Corp. used the VMworld conference on Tuesday to announce an expansion of their partnership that will see Mitel’s cloud-based communication and collaboration services offered to Canadian businesses through RackForce.
RackForce is the largest VMware Service Provider Partner (VSPP) in Canada, with data centres in Kelowna as well as Barrie, Ont. The Mitel unified communications solution will be offered to RackForce’s existing customers via the cloud, and will also be available as a white label solution that resellers and service providers can market under their own banner. At the core of the solution, which will launch Sept. 1, is Mitel’s MiCollab and MiVoice Business platforms.
“MiCollab and MiVoice Business support up to 250 end users on a single VMware vApp, plus the solution will allow us to host large enterprise companies that have 65,000 or more end users with no change in the management systems or software code,” said Rackforce president and CEO Tim Dufour. “That is a great value proposition for growing companies or public sector organizations that need advanced communication capabilities and the ability to grow or shrink communication services on demand.”
Mitel has worked with RackForce for a number of years hosting other services and Stephen Brown, vice-president of cloud strategy and strategic partners with Mitel, said they see a lot of potential with this new virtualized solution.
“We’re happy to see partners like RackForce coming online, taking our solutions to market virtualized,” said Brown. “We expect exponential growth on the virtual side.”