Telus unveils IP-One telephony, gets endorsement from Borland

Telus of Canada unveiled its IP-One managed telephony service today after more than a year in production with enterprise customer Borland Canada, which threw its full-fledged support behind the service.

Borland switched from an on-site, PBX solution for its corporate communications to a completely managed and hosted service from Telus. "Although we chose Telus’ IP-One service based on its technical excellence, the reality is we had some very serious business drivers that forced our choice of this solution," said Christopher Corey, president and general manager of Borland Canada.

Borland will use IP-One for its corporate communications as well as in support of its distributed sales force. "Borland operates across Canada and has offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. This system allows us easy access to our distributed teams and, more importantly, allows customers easy access to us," Corey said.

Telus made its IP decision three years ago. Today, it claims to be the first and only carrier-class, fully managed advanced IP telephony service available in Canada.

"IP-One combines the pervasiveness of telephony with the power of IP networks and the Web to create an entirely new communications experience for our customers," said John Seliga, vice president of IP Solutions at Telus.

Borland is just one of a number of customers Telus has running on its IP-One service, which it says has already handled over one million calls.

In addition to traditional telephony services, Telus’ IP-One offers Web-based voice and text messaging, on-demand audio conferencing and Find Me-Follow Me service.

"It is a technology innovation, but it’s exciting for what it means for businesses and government organizations in Canada," said Joe Natale, executive vice president and president of client services at Telus. Natale joined Telus in June, coming over from BearingPoint (formerly KPMG) where he was country leader for Canada.

The service is integrated with Telus’ company directory and is accessible through a Web portal from work, home or anywhere with access to the Internet. It also does voice mail management so voice mails can be managed in the same way text messages are, including the ability archive them.

An important cost savings feature to both Telus and its customers is the need for only one network infrastructure. "It is a fully-managed hosted solution. [There is] no specialized equipment needed, no software in [the customers’] environment," Natale said. "All you need is a properly designed and implemented local area network. Telus takes responsibility for managing the complexity."

Helping deliver its IP-One service and part of the launch is Cisco Systems. Cisco’s Service Provider Business Voice Solution helps service providers offer managed business voice services and is deployed at China Unicom SiChuan, at enterprise customers of SBC’s PremierSERV IP telephony Advantage solution and BT.

"We deploy IP services around the world," said Terry Walsh, president of Cisco Canada. "The service Telus is launching is one of the most advanced services of its kind that we have seen."

Another vendor, VocalData, supplies its application server as part of the IP-One service. "We are proud to support their leadership position in next generation solutions for enterprise customers—leadership based not just on a promise or a plan, but with demonstrated success over the past year," said VocalData in a statement.