Rewinding the Mitel Announcement to Partner with Ring Central

On November 9th, 2021, Mitel announced the formation of a strategic partnership with Ring Central, providing MiCloud Connect clients with a seamless path to Ring Central's best-in-class cloud-based MVP solution over time, while Mitel continues to sell its award-winning MiCloud Connect solution.

What does this mean to existing or future Mitel MiCloud customers? Was Mitel acquired, or is this a partnership, and how does this impact Mitel MiVoice Connect on-premises customers?

As long-time industry veterans of Unified Communication deployment, we thought we would rewind the Mitel announcement and shed some light on what this really means to current and future Mitel customers.

RingCentral plans to pay Mitel $650 million to acquire intellectual property rights and patents covering network and call management, security, and infrastructure. In exchange, Mitel's existing investor group led by affiliates of Searchlight will invest $200 million in equity in RingCentral, making this indeed a partnership transaction.

If you are on Mitel Connect Cloud, feel confident that your Mitel system is a supported platform and will be into the unforeseeable future.

MiCloud Connect phones and service will be branded RingCentral MVP. Mitel clients will be able to migrate to Ring Central's MVP platform anytime, and product enhancements leveraging joint technologies begin with Mitel phones and device support for RingCentral MVP starting the first half of 2022.

If you are on MiVoice Connect (ShoreTel / Premise), the Mitel cloud alliance with Ring Central does  impact you. It appears that it could bring some good news for premise customers as Mitel has pledged to dedicate R&D dollars and engineering resources to deliver innovations and possibly much desired APIs to the platform. That includes developing on-premises and hybrid options to help on-premises clients extend their existing investments.

CEO Ken Treleani of KTS Networks says that they have seen mergers and partnerships like these happen over the years. He said that KTS customers are supported by KTS regardless of the manufacturer products/services that they own, insinuating that the performance of Mitel phone system has more to do with who supports your phone system rather than who built it.

While the Mitel cloud migration path for innovation and upgrades may eventually include an upgrade to Ring Central's MVP platform, business leaders have choices. Work with a proven UCaaS and telecommunications partner who offers market-leading brands. Most importantly, work with a partner whose support and consultation services help you find the best possible solution according to your needs, not their portfolio. An experienced partner will advise you on best practices for extending and transforming your current phone system while keeping an eye on innovation that can help your team service clients from the office or remote locations.

Celebrating our 35th year in the industry, KTS has become one of the most tenured, respected, and largest privately held IP Technology companies supporting over 15K endpoints Globally. Anyone can sell you a phone system, but we want to build a long-term relationship with you. Whether you have 20 or 500 telephones, we give all our clients the attention and training they need to do their jobs better. Our FREE training and quarterly seminars at KTS University ensure everyone on your team (even new hires) have the skills and know-how to achieve results.