500

500 Limited are demonstrating NEC’s Voice over IP telephony solutions on Stand 41 at the Law Show in Olympia.

Find out how you can:

• Learn the secrets associated with VoIP
• Save your business money, using the Internet for your business telephony
• Earn more money for your business, by increasing productivity within your team
• Ensure you reduce your litigation vulnerability by using proven, SRA compliant call recording
• How you can sensibly integrate your mobile phones with your office system
• How you can improve your client relationships by integrating Outlook with your phone system
• How you can integrate your computer and your telephony system to deliver great features like presence, find me, follow me and database pop ups

Win a bottle of Champagne

Once a day we will be drawing a business card out of our bowl and presenting the winner with a bottle of Champagne!

500 Limited is delighted to announce that we will be attending the London Law Show which is running at Olympia between the 8th and 10th March.

As well as presenting (*details below) we are exhibiting (stand 41) and we will be demonstrating:

• Integrating phones and desktop applications – what’s possible and the benefits of doing so – 08.45 (before the CPD training starts)
• Making free calls from your mobile phone – 11.00 (coffee time)
• How to use the Internet to reduce your phone costs – 12.45 (lunchtime)

These live system demos are designed to bring you up to date with what’s happening in the telecommunications world and focus on how to save money and improve how you look after your clients and your prospective clients.

Anyone visiting our stand will also be able to win a bottle of Champagne!

* We have a presentation slot as part of the Law Firm Management Conference team talking on the 9th March from 9.30 until 12.00 for which 2.5 CPD hours are available. Our topic will focus on using modern phone systems to increase productivity, collaborate with mobile workers, stay SRA compliant and improve client relations.

If you cannot make it but still wish to hear what we have to say; simply give us a call on 0845 0000 500 x507 and we’ll arrange a briefing just for you and your team if required. Alternatively, fill out our Contact Us form.

See you at the show.

ReachOut Plus is a fast growing charity based in St Albans and working across Hertfordshires and Bedfordshire – and with a growth strategy that aims to be working across five counties by 2014-5. We work to Create Opportunities that Change People’s Lives and we work especially with young people and with those who have disabilities, special needs or particular disadvantage.

In late 2009 we wanted to do several things: we wanted to move our offices to larger premises to support continued growth and much needed development; we wanted an integrated telephone system with non geographic numbers; we wanted to save money; we wanted excellent customer service; and we wanted a flexible telephony solution that would expand with the Charity and with as little hassle as possible.

From an internal perspective we wanted staff working from several locations, or remotely from home, to have a sense of working together – we are now all on the same “switchboard” and use an extension to reach team members who are actually miles apart. From an external perspective, despite being headquartered in St Albans, we did not want to be identified with one particular area – our main delivery points are elsewhere across Herts and Beds at this point in time, and we want to expand beyond those county borders as soon as we have the resources to do so. A non-geographic 0845 number met that need very well.

We first met Jonathan Rodwell, the owner of 500 at a local Business network meeting, and worked through the various options for us. 500 have more than met all our aspirations and provided the service we were looking for. At each stage in our development they have provided the right technical solutions to our needs, at the right price. The VOIP system they provide is cheaper and much more appropriate to our needs than conventional telephony. They have been unfailingly attentive and responsive when we (very rarely) have a problem. In most cases they tell us we have a problem – and what they are doing about it – before we find out ourselves!

The result is that we have an excellent value telephony service which provides exactly what we need from a company we trust and can recommend with great confidence. Sean, in their technical department is always on the ball with appropriate expertise; Chris Wright, their development manager, is keen to ensure the business continues to be forward thinking and innovative as well as effective and customer focused; Jon Smith, their sales manager, is always keen to find the right solution for the customer – not just the biggest order.

Our staff numbers have doubled in the time we have been working with 500. The basic provision has coped really well with that expansion and we are delighted with the quality of service – so much so that we are now working with 500 to integrate our mobile phone requirements with the VOIP provided service we already rely on.

500 Limited is delighted to announce that it has become one of NEC’s select group of accredited direct solution resellers. With immediate effect 500 Limited can supply and support NEC telephony solutions within its portfolio of communications products and services.

This announcement coincides with a recent announcement on the wider brief that Managing Director Jonathan Rodwell has given his team to deliver complete telecommunication solutions to prospective clients. Jonathan comments:

“No two businesses are the same, which is why our solutions are always tailored for our customers. Adding NEC equipments to our portfolio will enable us to better meet our customers’ needs.”

500 Limited will focus its efforts on supplying the NEC SV8100 Communications Server, which is the ideal business telephone system for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that wish to compete and grow their businesses over time. The NEC SV8100 is a robust, feature-rich business telephone system, which scales up to 512 traditional, VoIP and softphone handsets.

This system dovetails neatly into 500 Limited’s new approach to the market place, which sees 500 Limited as designers, providers and through-life maintainers of telephony solutions, network connections, mobile phone solutions, conferencing, hosted desktop services as well as the integration of these systems with desktop applications.

NEC is a leading global enterprise telephony solution provider; investing over £2 billion in research and development every year; employing more than 150,000 people worldwide and is one of the top 5 computer and communication companies in the world. Within the UK NEC provides technical support, training and marketing resources to assist communication specialists like us at 500 Limited.

If you are already an existing NEC user please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss your support and maintenance requirements or if you are looking to migrate your telephone system to a modern VoIP solution simply call us on 0845 0000 500 or use our ‘Contact Us’ form.

Recognized Leader Continues to Set Benchmark for Innovation, Communication and Collaboration in Industry

Zultys, a premier provider of innovative unified communications solutions that empower businesses to collaborate effectively, today celebrates its 10-year anniversary. For a decade, Zultys has delivered flexible and cost-effective IP business phone systems that help businesses and organizations worldwide to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Now a recognized and respected authority in the industry, Zultys has established its brand as the hallmark of innovation, quality and reliability.

Since its founding in 2001, Zultys has been a pioneer in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based unified communications, and has established a long track record of firsts in the industry. Zultys was the first of the next-generation VoIP communications firms to fully adopt the SIP open standard for IP telephony and unified communications, well before it became the global standard for the industry.

The full article can be found at http://www.zultys.com/about/news/Zultys-Celebrates-10-Years-of-Innovation.php

Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year
from
Everyone here at 500 Limited

Business owners or IT directors looking to migrate a business to VoIP are always faced with the question: a hosted or a premises-based system?

Here at 500 we offer both solutions and this article will try and explain some of the differences between the two systems rather than listing the many similarities. At the end of this article you’ll be informed well enough to be able to better assess the needs of your business.

First things first…

Even before discussing the functionality, number or users or locations, there are two basic questions that a business needs to carefully consider:

1. How much initial capital outlay vs. ongoing costs does your business want to spend; i.e. what is your business cost model?
2. How big is your IT department and are they capable of supporting a premises-based IP PBX system?

Functionality…

With regards to functionality both solutions have many similar features, offering a rich business grade level of functionality to their end users (if business grade equipment is utilised).

It is often a case of ‘horses for courses’ and your needs will determine the correct solution for your business. However, in a direct like-for-like comparison our premises-based system (manufactured by Zultys) does have the edge over our hosted solution, (manufactured by Broadsoft). These marginal differences are highlighted below and predominantly focus on the sharp end of telephony usage, the desktop client application: ‘MXIE’ on our premises based system, ‘Unity’ on our hosted system. Both MXIE and Unity are excellent desktop clients – but it is MXIE that has the richer feature set.

• ‘Find Me, Follow Me’ – Both clients offer this functionality, but Zultys can offer this on up to 16 different devices.
• Softphone – Both systems permit soft-phone integration MXIE has an integrated PC softphone.
• Call Attached Data – MXIE allows a user to make and track annotated notes on a call.
• Exchange / Outlook Integration – Both MXIE and Unity offer this functionality. A user can see all contacts within their client applications. However, the integration on the Zultys system is synchronised: deleting a voicemail that you have listened to via an attachment to an email will also delete the voicemail on the system itself.
• ‘Screen dial’ from a web page or document – MXIE is able to offer hot-key screen-dialling from contacts or any number from a web page or document. Unity also offers this functionality to web browsers (Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer).
• Fax Server Integration – Both solutions offer inbound faxing. However, MXIE offers outbound faxing.
• Unified Messaging – Both systems offer secure instant messaging (IM) through their client applications, however the premises system has the edge in that MXIE can also be enabled to allow IM with Yahoo and MSN.
• Resilience options – The premises system has the ability to easily set up resilience options within the dial plan for outbound calls.

Number of users and locations…

Number of users does partly come into play when deciding between premises-based and hosted. Small businesses, fewer than 15 users are often more suited to the hosted route.

More care is required with medium-sized businesses. There are no hard and fast rules as to which solution is best – no two businesses are the same – so it cannot be said that fewer than 50 users should be hosted and above should be premises-based. Each of the many factors, all of which are different to each business looking to migrate to VoIP, need to be considered. Examples are:

• Cost Model – Is your business looking at upfront capex costs or recurring operational costs?
• Technical support – What is your business model in terms of outsourcing? Do you have an IT department and could it support an IP PBX system? Or would you prefer a fully managed service?

• Number of locations – Do you have one large site? Do you have a corporate site and regional satellite sites? Do you have many small disparate sites nationally and internationally? Each scenario could offer alternate solutions depending on the other factors as well.
• Number of home and mobile workers - Again similar to the number of locations, the mix of home and mobile workers should be considered.

Larger enterprises on the other hand are likely to go down the premises route. Typically, they have an IT department currently supporting their existing systems and servers and perhaps they too also manage a PBX. Larger businesss are also more likely to favour a capex model (although our systems can be leased if required).

Finally…

The number of users and geographical spread of them are certainly important considerations but the bottom line often still reverts back to your cost model and technical support. For example, one 100-user solicitor business with good IT department operating via a single site would be typically advised to adopted a premises-based solution. However, a similar 100-user landscape gardening firm with no IT department with a disparate workforce may be advised to adopt the hosted telephony model.

Here at 500 we say ‘No two clients are the same so why should our solutions be?’ so if you need to talk to us further about which solution best suits your business then please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0845 0000 500, or alternatively fill in our Contact Form.