Toshiba Pairs UCaaS With Leased Phone Equipment

By Ellen Muraskin

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Another telecom-system vendor has moved to a leasing business model in a move to remove the customer barrier of upfront investment.

Toshiba says it will offer businesses a combination of cloud-based voice and unified-communications services with leased on-site equipment under its VIPedge brand, sold through its dealer channel.  

The VIPedge offering rolls the UC hosted switch, telephone equipment and voice service into one monthly payment, in 24, 36 or 60-month commitments. On a leased model, it turns business communications from capital expenditure into a more tax-efficient operating expense. It also offloads responsibility and costs for upgrades and fixes from customer to vendor.

According to David Ansehl, director of sales for Toshiba’s Telecommunication Systems Division, Toshiba is providing this leasing offering to dealers in partnership with one of their leading partners.

“It is a transparent service for the dealer and end user,” said Ansehl. “Toshiba provides a single monthly invoice and remits payments back to the leasing company on the customers’ behalf. Toshiba also pays dealers up front for all labor and one-time additional peripheral hardware charges.”

Toshiba dealers also perform network assessments to ensure that customers’ IP infrastructure can support IP voice. In addition, Toshiba provides a free online tool to assess bandwidth voice readiness, which can be used by both dealers and end users.

As a cloud deployment, VIPedge offers the elasticity to easily resize the system with the gain or loss of users. It also confers survivability, since extensions can be transferred immediately to other endpoints at other locations in the event of power outages or disasters. System administration is included, as well as a choice of optional international calling plans.

Customers can be easily migrated from Toshiba’s own IP-based CPE, the IPedge, or can expand beyond an outgrown IPedge or Strata CIX into a hybrid cloud solution, networking VIPedge with the on-site systems.

UC features include acceptance of smartphones and tablets as business phone extensions, international one-number reach, low, IP-scale pricing for international calls from mobiles, presence, IM and presence integration with Microsoft Skype for Business users.