Aastra's Co-CEO Hosts Partner Event in Dubai

DUBAI and JOHANNESBURG, April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Aastra, a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market, held its annual partner event for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa in Dubai with the presence of co-CEO Tony Shen.

During this 2-day gathering, Aastra's channel partners and distributors were able to get updated on the latest communication trends and technological achievements as well as Aastra's specific partner program for the region and a new sales incentive program. This incentive program called "Top Gun" is open to all certified partners and their resellers and rewards sales and pre-sales individuals based on a point gathering system similar to frequent flyer programs.

Participants were able to experience live high definition (HD) video conferencing with the Aastra BluStar™ 8000i media phone. Aastra also presented the new BluStar™ Client that takes video collaboration to a new level with a consistent customer experience across a choice of devices such as PCs, iPads and iPhones. It helps users work together more effectively - for example, on-the fly video conferencing with remote workers, road-warriors and teams working on the same project to exchange ideas more easily and collaboratively.

Present at the event were also Aastra's technology partners HP (with whom Aastra enjoys an alliance in the networking area), Ingate (a Swedish vendor of secure remote access solutions for SIP based communications) and LinkCom (a French manufacturer of SIP-based GSM gateways and door phones)

Peter Hofman, President of Aastra Middle East & Africa comments: "We are proud to have added several new system integrator partners during 2011, namely: ART Telekom in Turkey, AVS in South Africa, BTC in Iraq, E-Cube in Ghana, ITECO in Nigeria, Security & Communications Equipment in Sudan and SUICOM in Pakistan as well as five new distributors namely: Jatan in South Africa, MAACore in UAE, MC3 in Algeria, Redington Gulf and SMART Tunisie in Tunisia."

The Best Performing Partner of the Year 2011 prize was awarded to Saudi-based Saudi-Ericsson Communications Company.

About Aastra Middle East and Africa

Aastra Middle East and Africa is the regional business unit of Aastra Technologies Limited, (TSX:"AAH"), a leading company at the forefront of the enterprise communication market. Headquartered in Concord, Ontario, Canada, Aastra develops and delivers innovative communications products and applications for businesses. With a strong focus on open standards, Aastra enables enterprises to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. Aastra's operations are truly global with more than 50 million installed lines around the world and a direct and indirect presence in more than 100 countries. Aastra is entirely dedicated to enterprise communications and offers one of the most complete portfolios of unified communications solutions individually tailored to satisfy its customers' requirements. These range from feature-rich call managers for small and medium businesses and highly scalable ones for large enterprises, associated UC applications, integrated mobility, multimedia call center solutions and high definition video communications to a wide selection of deskphones and cordless terminals. For additional information on Aastra, visit our website at http://www.aastra.com/mea

Aastra® is a registered trademark of Aastra Technologies Limited in the United States and Canada. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

SOURCE Aastra Middle East and Africa