On November 9th, 2021, RingCentral and Mitel announced a strategic partnership that makes RingCentral, an industry leader in the cloud communications space, the exclusive UCaaS partner for all of Mitel’s customer base.
The goal of the partnership from a customer-service perspective is to move Mitel’s cloud UC customer base to RingCentral, where they can benefit from a reliable and secure solution that is designed for scale with enterprise-grade functionality. In this article, we’ll share what this looks like and what this means for MiCloud Connect and Mitel MiVoice Connect customers.
While this partnership is exciting, understandably, it may leave you with some questions and uncertainty about how to proceed. What will your future look like?
As a Mitel Platinum Partner for many years and one of RingCentral’s top global partners with Premier Status, we’re confident that this strategic partnership is a win-win for everyone, including you.
What the RingCentral and Mitel UCaaS Partnership Agreement Includes
To start, RingCentral did not buy Mitel. What they acquired was the intellectual property rights to the CloudLink platform and other technology Mitel developed that allows on-premise customers to integrate with cloud applications.
Here are the specifics according to RingCentral:
“RingCentral will pay Mitel $650 million to acquire intellectual property rights and patents covering network and call management, security, and infrastructure. Demonstrating its commitment and excitement about the partnership, Mitel’s existing investor group led by affiliates of Searchlight will invest $200 million in equity in RingCentral as part of the transaction.
RingCentral did not buy Mitel’s UCaaS customers. Instead, they became the exclusive UCaaS partner for Mitel’s customer base which includes over 35 million users. This enables Mitel’s users to have an easy migration path to the RingCentral MVP platform which offers advanced cloud-based messaging, video, and voice from within a single app.
What Does The Mitel and RingCentral Agreement Mean for Mitel’s UCaaS Cloud Customers?
For starters, this means that as a Mitel UCaaS cloud customer, you will eventually be migrated over to RingCentral’s MVP platform. This also means you’ll have improved security, five 9s service reliability, and access to broad enterprise app integrations that improve workforce productivity.
Don’t expect any massive changes overnight and don’t worry, when you come into the office tomorrow morning your phones will still work as usual. 😊 RingCentral and Mitel didn’t give specific timeframes and milestones, but they made it clear that they’ll work with each customer according to their needs and appropriate pace.
At this point, there isn’t much for you to do. According to Mitel, they will continue to provide support for their MiCloud Connect platform.
Regarding phones that you’ve invested in, they’ve got you covered for that as well since they expect to have Mitel phones and devices RingCentral MVP certified during the first half of 2022 per the official press release.
Recommendations if You’re a Mitel UCaaS Cloud Customer
Our recommendation is to make sure you have the partner support necessary to help step you through the migration and implementation process. Working with someone that already understands your business and how you operate is critical to ensuring a smooth transition.
For small businesses, going through implementation with RingCentral directly may be fine, however, if your business has multiple users, locations, advanced or unique requirements, it would be a good idea to team up with a partner that understands both Mitel and RingCentral environments.
Converged Technology Professionals check both those boxes. In addition, we’re offering free professional services implementation which includes training on the RingCentral application for you and your organization. We’re one of only three RingCentral partners in the nation certified to perform the implementation on your behalf! Just let us know and we’ll be glad to discuss these options with you.
What Does This Mean if You’re a Mitel MiVoice Connect On-premise Customer?
So, what does this mean for you if you're one of Mitel’s on-premise customers? Don't panic. We've got your back.
As noted earlier, RingCentral acquired intellectual property and rights to the CloudLink technology and platform. The purchase of this platform is brilliant strategically because it enables on-premise customers the ability to utilize a phased hybrid approach to migrating to the RingCentral platform with minimal disruption.
As a Mitel on-premise customer, you can keep your voice while utilizing RingCentral’s application for collaborating and communications – such as meetings, videos, chat, and SMS.
Technically you don’t need to do anything, similar to Mitel MiCloud users. Ultimately the goal is to provide you with a very smooth transition experience to the cloud at a pace you are comfortable with. However, it is going to be extremely critical that you have a trusted partner that is familiar with the Mitel MiVoice Connect environment to help you get as much feature parity as possible, when and if you choose to migrate to the RingCentral platform.
We’ve helped numerous clients migrate from Mitel to RingCentral’s MVP solution, providing proper guidance, strategic advisement, and oversight to ensure their goals and expectations are met with great success. Going it alone is not advised.
We Started Preparing for On-Prem's Decline in 2019
We’ve often talked about the issues we’re seeing in the on-prem market and have been very transparent about warning our customers of the continuing hardware price increases, supply delays, and decrease in support services.
And here we are today. We’ve spent the past two years preparing for this scenario to play out and we are uniquely qualified to help you and your business through this process. Just ask us how.
Should You Renew Another Long-Term Mitel Support Contract?
This is an important question to consider as support contracts can be a non-refundable expense. You may want to think twice before renewing and look at other potential options.
Before you decide, however, you should know your options. You can renew your current agreement with your existing partner, but don’t expect any breaks if you decide to leave early and move to cloud. Read your support agreements carefully!
Secondly, if you still need support for your PBX for the short term, our team of certified Mitel engineers can still help. We’re offering
short term and no-term T&M options to help clients that don’t need a full support term agreement or aren’t ready to make the move to cloud immediately.
When the time comes, our team can guide you step by step through the evaluation and implementation processes just like we did with other clients such as Brunswick, Milwaukee Brewers, Sweetwater, Echo Incorporated, Chicago Cubs, and many other household names. Check out their experiences here.
How Will This Impact Mitel ECC and Contact Center Customers?
Currently, Mitel/ShoreTel ECC is not impacted and was not part of this agreement, since the exclusive partner agreement was for UCaaS, not CCaaS. If you’re a Mitel contact center customer and looking to move to cloud, we can work with you to set up demos and evaluations of the top cloud leaders such as RingCentral, TalkDesk, 8x8, and more.
Do You Have to Move to RingCentral?
The quick answer is ‘of course not’. However, with this strategic partnership, the goal is to make it very easy to move to RingCentral in a variety of ways.
With that said, we help clients evaluate multiple Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders, and RingCentral happens to be one of them. Although we are one of the top global RingCentral partners, and are one of three that provide USA-based implementation and support services, sometimes RingCentral isn’t the best fit for the customer. If you’d like to request more information about our evaluation and consulting services, let us know and we’ll be glad to chat.
What Will the Implementation/Migration Process to RingCentral from Mitel Look Like?
How the Mitel and RingCentral phased migration process will look depends on a few factors, such as whether you choose to migrate directly to RingCentral MVP, take a hybrid approach while keeping your on-prem voice, or take an even more staged approach.
As an experienced Mitel Platinum partner and a RingCentral Premier partner, we have helped many clients migrate to RingCentral successfully at a pace that worked for their organization. Some clients migrated from Mitel, others migrated from other systems such as Cisco or Avaya. You can read about those stories here and how we ensured those implementations were successful.
Do You Need a RingCentral Partner Like You Needed a Mitel Partner?
As a Mitel client, you know they require you to have a current partner of record. With RingCentral, this is not a requirement as long as you’re comfortable handling the planning and most aspects of the migration yourself. Most businesses will turn to an experienced RingCentral partner like us to help them properly prepare, strategize, plan, implement, deploy, integrate and train their users.
Some of the issues you could be dealing with during implementation are the same as when you moved to Mitel. These include call handling, number porting, user configurations, account set-ups, go-live testing, workflow testing and more.
Additionally, our support is 100% USA-based and our holistic approach to helping clients ensures that their expectations are being successfully met throughout the entire process, including post-implementation.
Just like with our Mitel customers, we will continue to advocate on your behalf and ensure you always have someone to turn to for answers. That’s why we developed our Technical Account Manager (TAM) program. The TAM team provides support during the migration and implementation process to ensure a smooth transition. Ongoing post-implementation assistance is also available through our Professional Services offerings.
Want to know what happens when large businesses attempt to go direct with a cloud provider? Check out this story here.
Do You Have a Plan for Moving to Cloud?
If you're not ready to adopt a new communications platform yet, there’s still time to formulate a plan and transition to the cloud on your own terms. When the time is right, we can evaluate your organization's unique needs and present tailored solutions, whether from RingCentral, Talkdesk, 8x8, or others.
That said, if RingCentral is your best fit, our team is well-versed in both systems and we’d love to help you create a winning migration strategy. We're one of three vendors worldwide able to do the implementation portion of the migration ourselves.
Furthermore, we offer a holistic approach when it comes to your communications plan. From design to implementation, training, and USA-based support, we're with you every step of the way.
If you're a current Mitel customer and you're wondering what your options are, contact us at https://www.voipswami.com/contact to ask us about our free implementation promotion!
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