Video Transcription

Chris Frey:
What do you think customers can expect from a support standpoint from the Mitel tech?

Frank Skiffington:
Well, from a support perspective, the support team will continue to fully support MiVoice Connect product on ongoing software releases till the end of sales date. From then until the end of technical support in 2029, which is a fair distance away, product support will continue to assist and support the customers. The best place to look for that is our product release life cycle policy, which you can find on the web.

That gives you software patches and service packs and they'll be delivered at end of sale and add-on sales and end of life, whenever we decide to end of life the product.

Chris Frey:
For customers that are looking to remain on their premise-based solution, what does Mitel suggest?

Frank Skiffington:
Well, ultimately, it's all about choice and we follow a program of CLM, customer lifecycle management. If the customer wants to stay on on-prem, then we would be pointing them towards our MiVoice Business solution as a go-forward solution. We're working with our channel partners and getting them skilled and trained at their own pace on MiVoice Business, but really it's up to the customer.

If they want to stay on prem or if they want to move to a UCaaS solution, then we would point them to RingCentral. It's all about choice at that point, and that's what CLM means for us. It's choice for the customer to go down whichever road they want in terms of dedicated instance and on prem or a UCaaS solution. If it's a UCaaS solution, then we are pointing them to our partner in RingCentral.That's really where we are in terms of the options that the customer has, which is more than a lot of vendors have to be honest. We've got options for each customer.

Chris Frey:
No. I totally agree with that too. You have all these relationships in place and we all want to leverage those existing relationships towards the future. We've all built a lot of trust there between ourselves and our customers. Having choice is really important.

Frank Skiffington:
Well, you are the trusted advisor for your customers and the customers are looking at you guys to say, "Okay. Which way should we go?" Sometimes that's not just about the product, sometimes it's also about the way in which they pay for it, how they consume it, the commercial options are available to them as well. I think we as Mitel, along with our partners at RingCentral, can offer a wide variety of choice in that respect.

Chris Frey:
Shifting now into the UCaaS space, how would you best describe the strategy between Mitel and RingCentral today?

Frank Skiffington:
Well, it's going great at the moment. The reality is we took a decision almost a year ago to get out of the UCaaS space and we decided to partner with RingCentral. We did have options. We could have partnered with other people, but we partnered with RingCentral because they are the market leader, because they are top right Magic Quadrant, Gartner Magic Quadrant.

There's a close synergy with what we do and what they do in terms of the integration of their applications, so it was a really sensible choice from our perspective. We are in the process of migrating our MiCloud Connect customers over to RingCentral and also at the same time we are working with our channel partners to capture those on-prem customers that are likely to move to a UCaaS solution and point them to RingCentral, our partner.

It's working really, really well at the moment and we are delighted with the results and I'm sure RingCentral are delighted with the results as well. Yeah, it's been a good decision so far.