Industry experts honor Sprint solution as “innovative” for business

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. & ORLANDO, Fla. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 19, 2015 — Sprint (NYSE: S) was named the winner of the Best of Enterprise Connect Award, which recognizes a company with the most significant technological advancement in enterprise communications and collaboration, at the 25th anniversary Enterprise Connect event in Orlando.

Workplace-as-a-Service is an integrated and fully managed solution providing all core IT and communications services, delivering a new option designed to allow businesses to refresh technology without over-provisioning or over-spending. In addition to designing and managing all wireline and wireless services a business needs, Sprint will deliver site-by-site integration and implementation.

Workplace-as-a-Service provides mobile device management across all wireless carriers to allow each employee within a business to choose their wireless provider but also includes optional, aggressively priced Sprint wireless plans for tablets or smartphones, available only as part of this solution. Workplace-as-a-Service offers service level agreements and a single source for support. It is offered on a predictable per-user, per-month basis with the potential to save businesses up to 50 percent over the traditional way of delivering these services to their employees.¹

“We congratulate our best in show winner, Sprint, on the launch of Sprint Workplace-as-a-Service. This new offering represents innovative thinking about the evolving role of the service provider in enterprise networks,” said Enterprise Connect Co-Chair Eric Krapf. “Though we’ve yet to see its full capability Sprint Workplace-as-a-Service promises collaboration, integration and interoperability.”

A panel of industry experts reviewed more than 40 entries, narrowing the field to six finalists before naming Sprint Workplace-as-a-Service as Best of Enterprise Connect. The judges were:

• Robin Gareiss, president and founder, Nemertes Research
• David Stein, principal, Stein Technology Group
• Marty Parker, principal consultant, UniComm Consulting and co-founder, UCStrategies
• Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst, ZK Research

“Having Workplace-as-a-Service selected as Best of Enterprise Connect validates our belief that it meets a need for a simple, flexible and affordable solution for our customers,” said Mike Fitz, Vice President, Business Solutions at Sprint. “Thank you to Enterprise Connect, and especially the judges who carefully evaluated so many offerings to select Workplace-as-a-Service as the winner.”

Workplace-as-a-Service includes the core wireless and wireline elements necessary to run a business:

• Wide Area Network (WAN) Connectivity over Sprint’s secure and reliable IP/MPLS service
• Enterprise-grade managed Wi-Fi
• Enterprise grade voice
• SIP trunking
• Local and domestic long-distance voice²
• Audio/Video conferencing
• Online collaboration
• Instant messaging and presence
• Mobile device management across all carriers, plus Bring Your Own Device support for laptops, tablets and smartphones
• Optional, Sprint wireless plans for smartphones and tablets

Workplace-as-a-Service is part of Sprint’s OfficeFuel^TM approach for making IT and communications enablement simple and flexible. Learn more at sprint.com/workplace.

About Sprint Business

Sprint Business provides a range of simple, flexible services that help workforces to collaborate, mobilize and accelerate. As work changes, the winners will be the businesses that remove obstacles to best empower their employees to drive business success. Our solutions are designed specifically to help our customers' people work better together, be more engaged and enjoy their jobs more. To learn more, visit  www.sprint.com/business or join the conversation at www.sprint.com/futureofwork.

About Enterprise Connect

Enterprise Connect is the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration in North America. Produced by UBM Tech, Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industry's vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise communications and collaboration hardware, software, systems and services. Enterprise Connect owns and produces No Jitter, ( www.nojitter.com), providing daily blogging and analysis, and it also serves the enterprise communications community with a weekly email newsletter, a Webinar Series and Virtual Events. For more information, visit www.enterpriseconnect.com .