As you may already know, 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 cloud customer base.
Plain and simple, Mitel is no longer selling cloud-based services as of June 30th, 2022, and instead will focus efforts on enhancing Mitel 3300 on-premise phone systems. RingCentral becomes the exclusive UCaaS partner for Mitel's customer base of over 35 million users, where the goal is to provide an easy migration path to cloud communications.
Am I Being Forced to Switch to RingCentral MVP?
Here’s where things start to get a little complicated. The short answer is no, you’re not being forced to move to RingCentral. Yet moving forward, you will have to make a choice.
It is possible that Mitel or RingCentral has already reached out to you about migrating to RingCentral MVP. We are one of the top RingCentral Premier Partners in the nation and one of only three partners allowed to conduct migrations in-house, so we can testify that it’s a great product and the market leader for a reason. You still have options though.
Your path forward may include:
Remaining on MiCloud Connect with direct support from a Mitel partner
Migrating to RingCentral MVP immediately or in a phased approach over time
Migrating to a different UCaaS solution such as 8x8 or Microsoft Teams
Wait, is My Current Mitel Support Ending?
While your current Mitel support contract remains valid, your partner’s ability to provide support could be diminishing. Some Mitel partners are simply not equipped to continue offering support at the levels they once did.
As a result, we’ve heard from many large businesses that their support tickets have faced long delays or went unanswered completely. Additionally, Mitel has stopped offering multi-year support agreements, so the expectation is that Mitel support for cloud-based UCaaS will come to an end in 2022 or early 2023.
What Are My Timelines for Making a Decision?
While that’s a logical question to ask, it's probably not the right question. You are free to ride out your Mitel support contract and delay this decision another six months or more. It is critical to understand, however, that the proper planning and implementation of RingCentral or any modern UCaaS solution is a large project for mid-market organizations and a massive undertaking for enterprises.
For instance, porting over phone lines could take as little as a few weeks. But what about implementing other features, training your staff, and customizing the UCaaS platform for your exact business needs? None of that can happen overnight.
We started helping our larger clients and professional sports teams prepare for a move to the cloud in 2020, and all of those implementations have been highly successful to date. The best advice we can give is to start planning as soon as possible, look at multiple leading UCaaS platforms, and then make decisions based on how your business operates and the tools your employees need to be successful.
Won’t RingCentral & Other UCaaS Vendors Do That for Us?
As we’ve stated earlier, we are one of the top RingCentral Partners nationwide and we think very highly of them as a product and an organization. You can absolutely work with them directly and achieve positive outcomes. But that process often includes an overseas implementation team that does not fully understand your business model or your actual needs.
Will they ultimately get the job done? Absolutely. It may not fit your timelines and overall expectations though, which makes the transition much more difficult.
At Converged Technology Professionals, we are paid by vendors such as RingCentral, TalkDesk, Mitel and 8x8 to take your customer experience to an entirely different level. Our team analyzes your current Mitel deployment, takes the time to learn about what’s important to you, and holds the vendors accountable to work within your timelines.
We handle everything in-house, from custom demos to the actual implementation, custom training, and long-term project management.
What Other Benefits Can You Provide Our Organization?
There are countless additional benefits of working with an experienced partner for your Mitel to RingCentral migration, but perhaps the biggest is the time our expertise will save you. We understand both platforms inside and out, plus we understand business and the goals your company is working towards.
For a limited time, we’ve been authorized by Mitel to terminate your Mitel Support contract immediately. RingCentral has also consented to price match your current PBX agreement and we can lock that price in for up to 60 months. We’re also offering free implementations by our technical account managers and free custom training on the RingCentral MVP platform for your users and administrators.
In the meantime, we also offer prepaid blocks or time & materials contracts to directly support your Mitel deployment until your migration date. That ensures we have enough time to plan your migration properly while also taking the pressure off your leadership.
To learn more about migrating to RingCentral or any leading UCaaS platform, contact us today.
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