Siemens Enterprise Communications Earns Top Ratings in Enterprise Connect Mock RFPs for Second Year in a Row

RESTON, Va., March 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Siemens Enterprise Communications received superior rankings in all three of the Request for Proposal (RFP) sessions conducted this year by three leading consultants and as presented at the Enterprise Connect 2012 Conference in Orlando. OpenScape UC Suite received high ratings for its architecture, functionality and pricing on the RFP evaluation scale as well as by comparison to other industry participants. While the RFP organizers and reviewers did not declare an overall "winner" as it was recognized that all solutions had their strengths in specific situations, this is the second year in a row that OpenScape UC Suite has earned top ratings in the RFP scoring.

Siemens Enterprise Communications was one of only four vendors to respond to all three RFPs and was rated in the top two positions for all three RFP versions. The RFPs, designed collaboratively by Stein Consulting, Constellation Research, and UniComm Consulting, included the cases UC without a New PBX, UC as part of a new PBX purchase installed on premise, and UC as part of a new PBX purchase delivered as cloud or hosted service.

The RFP designed by UniComm Consulting and entitled "UC without a New PBX," set out to discover what leading UC vendors can offer when a customer is implementing unified communications (UC), without deploying a new PBX. UniComm Consulting designed the RFP in this manner to showcase the fact that UC can be deployed without a new PBX, and in fact can deliver strong returns when deployed in this fashion. All eight competitors responded to an RFP for 2,000 users, which required presence, instant messaging, user profiles, click-to-communicate, conferencing, mobile communications and communications-enabled business applications.

"Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape UC Suite provides a very solid solution for UC without a new PBX," said Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting. "The requirements for any UC implementation depend on each enterprise's specific use cases, and the Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape UC platform ranks as a strong and adaptable offering based on the attractive combination of architecture, functionality, and 5-year total cost. Our mock RFP exercise at Enterprise Connect lets prospective UC customers look at multiple UC vendors in context of a standard requirements set to help calibrate the many offerings to their specific business needs."

"The strong ratings we received in these RFPs shows the flexibility of Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape UC Suite for both premise and cloud deployments and for both IP Telephony and for UC applications and reinforces the fact we are committed to delivering cost effective and innovative solutions to our customers, in particular in the areas of mobility and integration with critical business processes," said Rick Puskar, Senior Vice President of Global Portfolio Management, Siemens Enterprise Communications. "We enjoy taking part in the Enterprise Connect RFP program because it confirms that Siemens Enterprise Communications provides the easiest path to unified communications."

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About Siemens Enterprise Communications
Siemens Enterprise Communications is a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications, including voice, network infrastructure and security solutions that use open, standards-based unified communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience. This award-winning "Open Communications" approach enables organizations to improve productivity and reduce costs through easy-to-deploy solutions that work within existing IT environments, delivering operational efficiencies. It is the foundation for the company's OpenPath® commitment that enables customers to mitigate risk and cost-effectively adopt unified communications. Jointly owned by The Gores Group and Siemens AG, Siemens Enterprise Communications includes Cycos and Enterasys Networks. For more information about Siemens Enterprise Communications or Enterasys please visit www.siemens-enterprise.com or www.enterasys.com.

Note: Siemens Enterprise Communications & Co K.G. is a trademark licensee of Siemens AG. HiPath, OpenOffice, OpenScape and OpenStage, are registered trademarks of Siemens Enterprise Communications & Co K.G. or its affiliates. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens' management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Siemens Enterprise Communications