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In this Mitel Minute Update provided by yours truly, we will be summarizing the latest announcement about Mitel's completed acquisition by Searchlight thus officially making Mitel a privately held company.
Earlier this year in April, Mitel announced that Searchlight Capital Partners entered into an all-cash acquisition of Mitel, valued at 2 Billion dollars.
On November 30, 2018, Mitel notified partners through a letter from Mr. Todd Abbott the EVP of Global Sales and Services that the transaction has now officially and successfully closed. In other words, Mitel is now Privately owned!
We wrote about the original announcement in our Mitel Minute Update series in April. We want to reiterate a few important points made in the letter which prove to echo what we originally posted about earlier in the year.
Business as Usual
This is certainly the phrase of the year and rightly so. It is business as usual. Mitel said this would be the case back then and in their latest announcement they state the same. Based on our personal experience being involved in communications with Mitel leadership throughout 2018 that this has proven true. In fact, Mitel has made it a point to listen to partners directly to ensure a positive and productive relationship, as evidenced by our invitation and acceptance to be a member of their 2018 Partner Advisory Board.
Digital Transformation Acceleration
What does this mean? There are two components in this statement, digital transformation, and acceleration.
By digital, Mitel is stating they are continuing to drive “the move to cloud for businesses worldwide.” That means investing in those technologies and expanding the reach of their cloud products. Acceleration is referring to the ability to now be more flexible in their strategy due to their new private status, no longer a publicly-traded company. Here is the exact statement we received, “As a privately held company with the strategic and capital support of the Searchlight team, Mitel will have increased flexibility to accelerate all aspects of our strategy in ways that allow us to maximize success for you and our mutual customers.”
Vision and Commitment Remains Unchanged
The letter goes on to reaffirm their commitment to providing seamless communications. Note the use of the word, seamless. This is a carryover from ShoreTel that described the seamless integrations between their phone and unified communications solutions having been built from the ground up on the same platform, Connect. Connect is now Mitel’s flagship product for cloud and on-prem solutions. Abbott continues to clearly state that the portfolio, leadership, and commitment to innovation remain unchanged and will in fact now be able to receive greater focus on driving their vision forward.
As a Mitel Platinum Partner whose main concern is providing the best service and products for our customers, our takeaway is the same as before and to repeat the mantra of the year…. business as usual… which really translates into more improvements and technology advancements that continue to drive productivity and efficiency through IP communications in the workplace.
*This information was provided to us from Mitel through their Partner communications network. This information is accurate at the time of publication however is subject to changes at any time. Contact your Account Rep for further details.