Mitel have acquired ShoreTel to become the second largest Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) provider.
The additional size, scale and financial foundation of the two companies will ensure continued support of the solutions that ShoreTel’s customers desire.
Customers are clearly moving to the cloud at a rapid pace. The combination of Mitel and ShoreTel creates a new UCaaS market leader with a differentiated strategy and solution, and a clear migration path so that no customer is left behind or will have to abandon what they already have to cloud-enable their organisation
– Don Joos, CEO of ShoreTel
In our opinion the benefits of the merger are?
- Scale – when it comes to the telecoms sector size and scale matters. The collective resources and technical expertise from both ShoreTel and Mitel create a unified communications powerhouse. It will allow ShoreTel to take advantage of global distribution and agreements Mitel has made, benefiting multi-national clients.
- R & D – joining two high profile companies facilitates a knowledge share to improve the customer experience and will add new technologies
- Cloud – Mitel have bought ShoreTel for their cloud technology and will accelerate customers move to the cloud and provide feature rich cloud based communications and applications. Mitel intend to continue to leverage ShoreTel’s extensive cloud portfolio.
- Financial stability – Mitel’s previous acquisitions have relied on a stable financial strategy behind each deal, with the company ending up in a stronger financial position shortly after the acquisition.
Mitel has a strong track record of becoming customer focused through their other acquisitions and has retained all of their customers. We don’t foresee this changing. Mitel’s CEO Rich McBee has a history of acquisitions since his inception in 2011 and has a clear pattern of taking the product, supporting it and growing it over time (See Inter-Tel).
This is a natural combination that enables us to continue to consolidate the industry and take advantage of cost synergy opportunities while adding new technologies and significant cloud growth to our business
– McBee
Although a definitive agreement has been signed, it will take several months for the deal to close. Until then the two companies remain independent entities.
Blackstar will continue to keep you up to date on the latest ShoreTel and Mitel merger developments. Our existing clients can rest assured that we’ll be available to support them and ensure its business as usual – #TrustBlackstar
