RingCentral-Mitel Partnership Exclusivity Comes to End

Just shy of three years after the love affair commenced, the RingCentral-Mitel partnership, in its exclusive state, is over. Under the terms of the original deal, the RingCentral-Mitel partnership set its sights on migrating Mitel's on-premises customers to RingCentral's Cloud MVP solution.

“In [the second quarter], we acquired certain additional assets and customer relationships related to Mitel’s MiCloud Connect and Sky unified-communications-as-a-solution (UCaaS) platform, RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis said on Thursday's earnings call. "While we have migrated hundreds of thousands of Mitel’s cloud seats already, we expect that this will allow us to provide a better customer experience for the remaining cloud base in their customers' digital transformation journey."

The call's stunner arrived when Shmunis shared, “Moving forward, RingCentral and Mitel will be non-exclusive partners."

In a statement to Channel Futures, Mitel's CMO Eric Hanson said, "This strategic shift enables both companies to address customer needs while focusing more deeply on our respective go-to-market strategies. With a growing number of customers today seeking a hybrid cloud approach, Mitel is focused on continued innovation of our hybrid, private cloud and on-prem UC solutions. Our portfolio supports integrations with various UCaaS vendors, and will continue to do so, giving us the flexibility to deliver the right mix of deployment options to meet each customer’s business needs.” 

Related:RingCentral Makes Bold UCaaS Market Move with Mitel Partnership

COMMfusion president and principal analyst Blair Pleasant said this opens Mitel to other partnerships. While RingCentral and Mitel will continue to team up, it won't be exclusive like before.

COMMfusion's Blair Pleasant

"And with RingCentral acquiring MiCloud Connect and Sky UCaaS customers, RingCentral is best positioned to migrate them to [its own] UCaaS platform. So I don't see this as a negative to either company, but an evolution, especially in light of Mitel's acquisition of Unify," Pleasant told Channel Futures.

What RingCentral-Mitel Partnership Exclusivity End Means

Craig Durr, chief analyst at The Collab Collective, told Channel Futures that the move will presumably satisfy both companies and by extension, their channels.

"For Mitel, this opens doors to exploring an expanded set of UCaaS partnerships, especially crucial after its Unify acquisition deepened its customer base in EMEA," said Durr. RingCentral, "on the other hand," Durr shared, "gains the opportunity to broaden its offerings into hosted, single-tenant solutions, starting with what it acquired - MiCloud Connect and Sky UCaaS," which could also spell more channel prospects.

The Collab Collective's Craig Durr

He added that if the two were dating and updated their Facebook relationship status, it would have gone from "In a relationship" to "'It's complicated,' as they are not breaking up entirely, but seeing other people," meaning that for channel partners who focused on this once-exclusive alliance, there could be some anxiety.

There is plenty of merit to what Durr shared, as the duo probably have more partnerships yet to be announced; plus, RingCentral has a notable relationship with Microsoft thanks to its Microsoft Teams integration that RingCentral CEO Shmunis says continues to see momentum.

RingCentral also has a laundry list of notable technology partnerships, the most consequential being the one it shares with Avaya that has comparable pursuits, while not altogether identical when you examine the particulars.

Under the initial RingCentral-Mitel partnership's terms, the agreement could have seen 35 million Mitel users migrate over to RingCentral's Message Video Phone (MVP), in addition to a $200 million investment in RingCentral from Mitel's private equity supporters. RingCentral also disclosed the $650 million acquisition of Mitel’s CloudLink technology – the unified communications company's platform that fosters on-premises PBX migration to the cloud.

A likely motivation for the move is a recalibration following the October 2023 Unify acquisition completed by Mitel, which gave it a new batch of potential and vastly more customers.

According to Mitel, it maintains the No. 1 position in EMEA and more than 10 countries, with Unify being the No. 2 company, singly. We reached out to RingCentral for comment but didn't hear back by the time of publication.