Mitel evolves its UC growth strategy and gains momentum with RingCentral UCaaS

Mitel’s overall philosophy for unified communications (UC) is enabling customers with broad flexibility to deploy what they want and purchase solutions how they want. A key differentiator of Mitel’s has been its belief that one size does not fit all. That belief is supported by a recent Techaisle global study revealing that 44% of firms use multiple communication platforms. On-prem unified UC solutions dominate in 88% of firms, but in 56% on-prem capabilities co-exist with cloud solutions. All these options are choices that Mitel supports with its Customer Lifecycle Management approach, recently bolstered by its exclusive UCaaS partnership with RingCentral.

Mitel - RingCentral UCaaS momentum - “A Differentiated and Evolved Partnership”

Mitel is not just partnering with RingCentral but doing even more by optimizing the complete migration experience through collaborative processes, migration tooling, device transfers, and exclusive incentives providing Mitel customers a world-class UCaaS solution and a clear, flexible path toward the future. Mitel is actively integrating numerous capabilities with the RingCentral MVP (Messaging, Voice, Phone) platform to enhance the whole experience for customers. The first example of this broad integration was evident just five months following the RingCentral partnership when Mitel launched its first set of certified devices – the 6900 series phones – which work seamlessly with RingCentral MVP. Customer choice and experience extend into a well-thought-through onboarding process, enhanced by Mitel’s Migration Assist Package, which introduces automation and accuracy while migrating customers 75% faster than industry standards. Customers migrating to less than a hundred seats can take advantage of these free implementation services. The free service is very generous as it includes access to an Implementation Advisor who also schedules discovery and training sessions and unlimited access via toll-free number for follow-up questions and assistance on system setup. Mitel partners or RingCentral provide professional services for customers with more than a hundred seats.

Mitel’s partnership with RingCentral has seen significant momentum, migrating over 100,000 seats in the first six months of the exclusive relationship.

The RingCentral – Mitel partnership is highly differentiated from others in the market, including RingCentral’s relationship with Avaya. From the outset, Mitel has distinguished itself from Avaya and others with superior pricing and purchase flexibility, ease of deployment and migration, professional services, and training. Although Avaya is widely considered to have a composable CPaaS offering, Mitel’s CloudLink technology with APIs and integration capabilities are yet to be fully utilized by developers and partners. Additionally, the compensation received from RingCentral fuels investments in core Mitel unified communications R&D and innovation and potential future merger and acquisition activities.

Growth Strategy

Mitel has recognized that the communications market is evolving, and customers need flexibility and choice. Hence, it built its strategy on four vectors of innovation:

1. Becoming experts in Hybrid & Edge,

2. Driving a proactive roadmap leveraging CloudLink,

3. Customer-centric platform enhancement, and

4. Expanding vertical solutions by leveraging ecosystem partners, that is, providing flexibility & choice for customers throughout their communications lifecycle.

Mitel's growth strategy is focused on private cloud subscriptions and traditional on-prem business models. Customers are demonstrating that they will migrate to a cloud solution at their own pace. The model for that cloud solution will take many different flavors depending on the customer’s needs, location, and business.

Some customers prefer to maintain their on-site solution and use the cloud to serve growing parts of the business. Others have business applications managed in a public cloud (like AWS or Azure) and prefer their communications deployed this way. Some customers are hesitant about data centers outside their countries of residence and want more control over maintenance windows and software upgrades. Yet another group of customers is happy to put their entire solution in the cloud as UCaaS, taking advantage of the simplicity of management and depth of the feature set.

Where deployment needs vary considerably, commercial preferences can likewise run the gamut. Some organizations want to consume their solutions in one-time licenses to fit time-bound budgets, while others prefer low entry costs via a monthly subscription. Mitel provides a wide range of choices enabling all customers to be served in the way they like. For those going to a cloud-based UCaaS model with RingCentral, Mitel provides a migration option that makes a move to RingCentral simple.

The growing importance of Customer Lifecycle Management in UC

During this year, Mitel introduced Customer Lifecycle Management to UC. The primary tenet of Mitel’s customer lifecycle management strategy is to ensure that customers have a full spectrum of options and empower the partners to sell the right solution to the right customer at the right time. It is about ensuring every end customer has high satisfaction and future-proof flexibility, no matter their current solution. For existing customers, Mitel is looking at adding real value to their business today with innovative analytics, giving them every reason to Get Current & Do More.

For new customers, Mitel focuses on vertical markets, especially ones like Healthcare and SLED, which lean toward private, or hybrid cloud models because of the need for security, privacy, and regulatory requirements. And third, for those customers where the public cloud is an excellent fit, like retail or small to medium businesses, Mitel offers UCaaS via the partnership with RingCentral. Mitel’s portfolio of flexible modern options is available in any way that customers prefer to buy them: CAPEX options, subscription options, and a complete range of private, hybrid, and on-premises deployment options.

Partners are crucial to success

Recognizing the importance of partners and the need to build and nurture high-performance partner networks, Mitel is committed to improving the partner experience and is investing in understanding the challenges faced by its partners and the sales and marketing investments that partners are making to adapt to the changing market. As a result, Mitel is building the programs and practices that resonate most with partners and the coverage options available to partners of different types of solutions. Mitel works with select technology partners to complement its portfolio in specific verticals, such as healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing.

CloudLink – a cornerstone for hybrid deployments

The selection of a communication deployment strategy is based on the best approach for the objective, with few qualms about changing directions in response to evolving needs. Techaisle data shows that hybrid cloud is the preferred option for 69% of firms, but many deploy private or public cloud unified communications solutions. CloudLink is the enabling and empowering architecture that extends Mitel’s on-site and hybrid communications portfolio and allows for new and improved ways to collaborate through deploying new applications and integrations. The technology, built on AWS, is cloud-native and uses infrastructure as code for scalability, effectiveness for deployment, and reliability. Over 30 applications currently use CloudLink.

Final Techaisle Take

On the drive to UC modernization, picking the right tour guide is critical. Lack of operational agility, fear of security breaches, and inability to migrate applications/systems to the cloud are crucial barriers to UC modernization. However, obstacles to modernization can be overcome with the right partner and vendor. Techaisle’s research finds that organizations must consider many factors when investing in modernization efforts. The complexities can be overwhelming —navigating hybrid work challenges, selecting the proper communication and collaboration tools, and creating a culture that keeps employees happy and engaged. Mitel’s Customer Lifecycle Management approach and its partnership with RingCentral are designed to lead the way and evolve as their clients evolve and drive better customer experience.