Mitel RingCentral Partnership

[AvayaRed]

Hello everyone on the Mitel side. I wanted to ask your thoughts on the announcement that Mitel will be partnering with RingCentral for their move forward path for UCaaS. I am not too familiar with Mitel as I have been mainly on Avaya/Nortel side but I thought Mitel had their own MiCloud offering so I was really shocked when I heard this earlier this month. I wanted to ask your thoughts on the partnership and what it means for the future. Avaya did the same deal with Ring and from a partner prospective, it seams like Avaya is trying to push IP Office (on prem solution) out the door and it has been making me nervous if they abandon that solution. I wanted to ask your guys thoughts on the Ring Partnership for Mitel and the future if you all heard anything.

 

[Devolution]

Mitel is just giving away their MiCloud Connect product which has been a pain for them since they bought the Shoretel product it's based on. Mitel's MiVoice Business product suite including MiCloud Flex is remaining under Mitel and will continue to be developed as normal.

Pretty good analysis of it all here

https://youtu.be/u3IKMJhjGPM

 

[AvayaRed]

What is the difference between MiCloud Connect and MiCloud Flex? Are they just both cloud hosted solutions?

Also does Mitel still sell on prem PBXs today or is it similar to avaya where they still sell it but push for cloud?

 

[Devolution]

MiCloud Connect was meant to be Mitel's answer to a small cheap platform for 200 users and below. An attempt to compete with Gamma Horizon, 8x8 and Ring Central's offerings. This was based on Shoretels voip platform that Mitel bought them for.
Flex is the Mitel hosted version of their MiVoice Business platform (and accompanying apps like MiVBG, MiCollab & MiContact). These are all developed in-house at Mitel. These are scalable up to thousands of users.

Mitel does still sell physical MiVoice Business servers. There is still a customer requirement for on-prem kit. We often have customers use Mitel virtual servers for their primary and on-prem for resiliency.

I'm not a Mitel 250, 400 or 5000 trained engineer so can't comment on if these are still physically available.

 

[AvayaRed]

Sounds just like Avaya giving the IP Office and keeping Aura and hoping to get people on OneCloud Private. I spoke with a Avaya partner that also sells RingCentral and the platform for under 200 is the same as the 1000 plus users so all R&D money is going into one product. It looks like they are going to be with Microsoft the major UCaaS providers.

Ring now has Avaya, Mitel, Atos and Alcatel pushing their SMB to RingCentral. Thats basically everyone from on prem world besides Cisco and Skype now Microsoft lol

 

[Rich Mckevitt]

We are still using the Mitel MIVB Business On Prem with virtual machines- thinking about moving to a fully based cloud solution this year though. Holding out for the full details on what RingCentral will give first before making a full decision as what we have really isnt fit for business now most are home working

Many thanks Richard

 

[Devolution]

Depending on how much money you have already put into Mitel licensing with your current solution, it might be worth sticking with the MiVB and adding a virtual MiVoice Border Gateway (MiVBG) for teleworker devices and possibly a virtual MiCollab server if you use softphones for your home workers. Moving to RingCentral could cost more. Mitel Flex is also an option and would be an easy migration path from your existing solution.

 

[AvayaRed]

When the the Mitel version of RingCentral expect to GA, does anyone know? I have seen on linkedin a lot of Mitel Sales people moved over to Avaya at the start of this year and am curious if Mitel is going to push Ring as much as Avaya is

 

[Billz66]

there is no mitel version its all branded ring central

you just refer your customer to them and then get a kick, back per month
its happening already

If I never did anything I'd never done before , I'd never do anything.....