“The deal to purchase Ericsson Enterprise Telephony business was concluded on May 1st. Ericsson brings to Aastra a successful product range and a large base of customers – in fact the move has re-inforced our position, according to analyst Canalys, as the number one telephony supplier of systems under 100 extensions in EMEA.
Consolidation in the PBX market is continuing, in the last few years Aastra has purchased Ascom, EADS, DeTeWe and now Ericsson Enterprise.”
Calvert says that right now its ‘business as usual’ but shortly Aastra is to place a lot more focus on developing the strength of their brand , Ericsson’s FMC capabilities and the open standards and SIP features within the Aastra IntelliGate systems.
“In the UK we have completed a very successful year with sales of IntelliGate up 25% and sales of our SIP phones increased by more that 60% where we put some of this increase down to the increased usage within the hosted telephony market but much has also been derived from a successful channel recruitment drive.
Later this year we will be launching new IntelliGate initiatives and will launch these at the Convergence Summit at Sandown Park in October.”