When Tarun Loomba became chief executive of Mitel Networks Inc. in 2021, the company made an interesting pivot. While the entire communications industry has been shifting to a software-as-a-service-based model, leveraging the public cloud, Mitel took a step back, looked at its strengths and the market, and decided to dedicate itself to serving customers via private or hybrid clouds.
Unified communications provider Mitel Networks Inc. today announced it has closed on the transaction with Atos SE to purchase Unify, formerly Siemens Enterprise.
In January of this year, Mitel announced it had entered exclusive negotiations to acquire Unify, expecting to close in the year’s second half. All the regulatory issues have been cleared, and the two companies are set to come together.
Communications provider Mitel has made it a strategic priority to focus on customer lifecycle management (CLM) principles to ensure its customers are getting full value from their investments in its technology.
For Mitel, this is a key initiative as CLM in unified communication (UC) is important in making sure customers are maximizing business value and, at the same time, future proofing themselves. Hybrid work has shifted UC requirements in favor of collaboration platforms that connect people who are dispersed across many remote locations.
Communications and the cloud have seemingly become synonymous. The pandemic-induced trend toward working from home prompted companies to adopt “as a service,” or UCaaS, solutions for collaboration.
This created a massive wave of deployments, and some industry observers began to believe that the on-premises opportunity, which includes private cloud, will no longer be viable.