At the Mitel analyst conference in Las Vegas last week, Mitel CEO Don Smith noted his favorite quote – “If change is inevitable you should drive it.” Mitel is doing just that – driving change. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, the “Word of the Day” at the Mitel conference was “virtualization.” Mitel is taking a bold step into the world of software – focusing on virtualization, hosted services, software as a service, subscription services, and more. The UCStrategies team has been encouraging switch vendors to move toward becoming software vendors as the value of call control changes in a UC world and the IP PBX becomes a feature server. Several vendors have heeded this call, and Mitel is aggressively moving in this direction, offering software-only solutions for scale and data center integration.
The company is focusing on communication applications, notably contact centers, collaboration, messaging, mobility, and the new Mitel Communications Director (MCD), a new software-based call control platform. By separating out the software from hardware, Mitel Communications Director will essentially become a feature server in a software-based telephony environment.
In terms of virtualization, Mitel announced a relationship with VMware to “strategically collaborate on solutions that improve efficiencies of real time voice applications and computing resources for organizations of all sizes.” Mitel notes that this will enable customers to leverage industry standard servers to maximize space, optimize IT resources, reduce power, and deliver business continuity. As the first telephony vendor to work with VMware’s new vSphere4, Mitel will enable customers to run the Mitel Communications Director software and Mitel real-time voice applications in a virtualized data center environment and build internal or enterprise clouds. With Mitel’s virtualization approach, applications can be moved to standard enterprise environments and be managed like other data applications. UC applications like Mobile Extension and “containerized” UC applications can be run in the VMWare environment. This virtualization will enable Mitel to provide enhanced offering for Service Providers for hosted applications and packaged UC applications for multiple customers.
As Mitel moves in this new direction, it will need to recruit new channel partners, and help some of its existing partners prepare for these changes. Not all of its partners will make it, and there will certainly be a shakeout in terms of those who are ready to move into the software world, and those who want to remain traditional telephony vendors.
Mitel has embarked on a important new strategic direction, which is to be commended. The challenge will be retraining existing partners and recruiting new partners who understand the software world, virtualization and cloud operating systems, centralization, etc. Mitel is ahead of the game and staking out a leadership position – let’s see if Mitel’s partners and customers will join in.