Mitel has acquired the unified comms business Unify from French reseller Atos.
The move means that Mitel has a combined customer base of more than 75 million users in 100 countries and an expanded community of more than 5,500 resellers, service providers, technology, and strategic alliance partners.
Mitel’s president and chief executive officer, Tarun Loomba, will serve as president and CEO of the combined company.
Mitel’s channel has been promised that it will get the advantage of cross-sell opportunities once the deal to acquire Unify closes.
Mitel announced a €700 million move for the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and communication and collaboration services (CCS) businesses of the Atos Group earlier this week, heralding the move as a positive one for the channel.
Mitel chief sales officer Graham Bevington said that his outfit and Unify share a common, channel-driven go-to-market approach that is well-suited to fuel success for channel partners.
“Partners would have a broader portfolio of products and services with which to ensure customers have the flexibility to choose the communications model they prefer, as well as more global resources to support the overall partner experience.
Atos has entered negotiations to sell its unified communications and collaboration (UCC) services business, Unify, to Canadian vendor Mitel.
The talks are part Atos’ divestment programme announced during its Capital Markets Day in June 2022.
The plan involves its separation into two publicly listed companies – Evidian, which would bring together its digital transformation, big data and cybersecurity services; and Atos (formerly TFCo), which would make up managed infrastructure services, digital workplace and professional services.
Onecom has snapped up IT services provider IMS Technology Services.
The deal adds more than 600 customers to Onecom’s books, the Vodafone, Microsoft, Google, Mitel, Samsung, Apple, Gamma and Five9 partner said.
Onecom’s revenues increased by over 80 per cent to reach £169 million in calendar 2021 primarily due to its aggressive M&A strategy. Founded in 2002, it has been backed by mid-market private equity firm LDC since 2019.
OneCom CEO Martin Flick said the acquisition builds on OneCom’s mission to extend its geographic footprint and technical capabilities.
Arrow has been awarded the Platinum Reseller Partner status by Mitel, an industry-recognised leader in Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC).
The Platinum Partner status is the highest level of accreditation that Mitel can offer, and distinguishes elite partners who represent the highest standards for Mitel’s solutions.
Arrow has been a reseller for Mitel for 18 years and in that time has designed and built one of the first Multi-Instance Communication Director (MiCD) platforms in the UK as well as being recognised as a Mitel Hospitality Partner – one of only eight in the UK.
Arrow Head of Products, Andy Arnold said: “This award is recognition of the depth of our Mitel expertise and also Arrow’s success in pushing the boundaries of unified communications. Earlier this year we launched our cloud collaboration platform. Scala – a flexible and feature-rich hosted telephony solution built on best of breed applications and services. Scala is designed and built with Mitel at its core and is a technology that people trust.
“We are delighted with this news and look forward to working even more closely with the Mitel team ” to ensure our customers continue to get the very best UCC solutions”.
Comms vendor Mitel has acquired rival ShoreTel for $530 million to create a $1.3 billion company.
The deal, which consists of an all-cash transaction at a price of $7.50 per share, or a total equity value of around $530 million, represents a 28 percent premium on ShoreTel’s closing share price as of 26 July 2017. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
Mitel claims the deal will make it the second largest unified communications as-a-service vendor in the market, doubling its revenues to $263 million.
The vendor also claims that the deal will make Mitel’s recurring revenue streams account for 39 percent of overall sales.
The combined entity will have around 3,200 channel partners and boast a global workforce of 4,200 employees.
Mitel CEO Rich McBee said: “This is a very 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. Together, Mitel and ShoreTel will be able to take customers to the cloud faster with full-featured, cloud-based communications and applications.”
Last year Mitel put in a $1.96 billion bid to buy videoconferencing vendor Polycom, but was snubbed months after when the firm was offered $2 billion by private equity firm Siris Capital.
Mitel has sold its mobile division and is now gearing up to decimate its remaining workforce
Ten percent of its workforce are being handed their pink slips and told to clean out their desks just a year after the comms giant was close to doubling in size last year through its proposed acquisition of Polycom.
The deal went tits up when Polycom got a higher bid.
Now, the emphasis for Mitel is to get as slim as possible, although other acquisitions are believed to be possible.
In February, Mitel completed the sale of its mobile division to the parent company of Xura, saying it would use the $350m cash proceeds to pay down its credit facility. This reflected its strategy to focus on the unified communications and collaboration market.
Getting rid of staff will result in the outfit taking a charge in the range of $25 million to $35 million this year.
Mitel chief executive Richard McBee said that with the mobile divestiture finished the outfit was taking a “proactive cost reduction action to align its operating expenses with our current and future business investment needs”. With language like that we can sort of see Mitel’s problem – a company which can’t say “sacking staff to save money” might be having difficulties facing broader reality issues.
McBee said he was “pleased” with the Q1 results, and “especially pleased” with Mitel’s performance in its larger European markets “where Mitel’s financial strength helps us to expand on our leadership position in the region”.
Mitel’s GAAP net losses widened year on year during the quarter ending 31 March 2017, from $12.9m to $19.7m, on revenues that fell slightly from $228.1 million to $223.1 million.
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