RingCentral Makes Bold UCaaS Market Move with Mitel Partnership

RingCentral is again shaking up the UCaaS competitive landscape, this time with Mitel.

A new strategic partnership will provide Mitel’s global customer base with a migration path to RingCentral’s Message Video Phone (MVP). That’s RingCentral’s cloud phone system.

With this partnership, RingCentral becomes the exclusive UCaaS partner for Mitel. MVP will integrate with Mitel’s CloudLink technology. That will provide Mitel’s user base of more than 35 million with a path to MVP.

Raul Castanon is senior research analyst with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. He said the partnership will likely have a “significant impact” on the competitive landscape. It will further RingCentral ahead of other cloud communications providers.

451 Research’s Raul Castanon

“The agreement should allow RingCentral to continue expanding its footprint and capture a significant share of the UCaaS market, without the complexities that M&A activity typically entails,” he said.

Financial Details

RingCentral will pay Mitel $650 million to acquire intellectual property rights and patents covering network and call management, security and infrastructure. In turn, Mitel’s investor group led by affiliates of Searchlight will invest $200 million in equity in RingCentral.

CloudLink allows customers to integrate their on-premises infrastructure with cloud applications. It will enable Mitel customers to leverage their existing on-premises PBX capabilities via the RingCentral application. This provides a transition path to full cloud adoption.

Products will continue to be branded RingCentral MVP, accelerating access to Mitel’s customer base through RingCentral and Mitel’s combined channels. The companies are planning additional product enhancements for the first half of 2022.

Vlad Shmunis is RingCentral’s founder, chairman and CEO.

“We are bringing together the best of Mitel and RingCentral to give customers the right communications and collaboration solutions for their needs,” he said. “We’re delighted to now be able to offer customers a flexible and differentiated digital transformation path.”

Tarun Loomba is Mitel’s president and CEO.

“The unique depth of this partnership furthers our strategy of delivering world-class communications to our customers and providing them a clear and flexible path for the future,” he said.

Mitel will continue to support customers on its MiCloud Connect platform.

RingCentral Expanding Its Reach

This is the latest of RingCentral’s strategic partnerships that expanded its reach and customer base. In fall 2019, RingCentral teamed with Avaya to roll out Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral. Avaya Cloud Office is now available in 13 countries.

In addition, RingCentral and Atos last year expanded their strategic partnership with the launch of a co-branded UCaaS offering, Unify Office (UO) by RingCentral.

“The partnership with Mitel follows a similar approach to previously established agreements with the likes of Avaya and Atos, among others,” Castanon said. “Given Mitel’s global market footprint, this is a big win for RingCentral that should allow it to position its MVP cloud communications platform with Mitel’s on-premises client base. For Mitel, it is a timely decision given that the transition to cloud-based business communications has accelerated in the past 18 months.”