Last week, Mitel announced that they reached a deal to acquire ShoreTel. This is part of their larger trend of acquiring Unified Communications (UC) companies. The move, perhaps provoked by increased customer demand for cloud-based solutions, will strengthen Mitel’s position in the UC market. The combined company will emerge as the #2 player in the UC market. Therefore, it will create a supplier with the technical ability to enable customers with new cloud-based solutions and applications.
The newly merged company’s headquarters will be in Ottawa, Canada, and will operate as Mitel. Rich McBee, Mitel’s Chief Executive Officer, will lead the organization.
“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,” said Mitel CEO, Rich McBee. “Together, Mitel and ShoreTel will be able to take customers to the cloud faster with full-featured, cloud-based communications and applications.”
Uniquely qualified to bring customers and partners to the cloud
Together, the combined company will boast about 3,200 channel partners and an industry-leading portfolio of communications and collaboration solutions. Mitel and ShoreTel have stated their commitment to providing continued support for all customers and partners, whether they are cloud or premise.
“With the announcement today, this concludes our comprehensive review of strategic alternatives by delivering a significant cash premium for our shareholders,” said Don Joos, CEO of ShoreTel. “Customers are clearly moving to the cloud at a rapid pace. The combination 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 organization.”
Once the merger is finalized, Mitel will be uniquely stationed to offer all customers the rewards of cloud-based communications. For enterprise customers, ShoreTel’s solutions will bolster Mitel’s ability to cloud-enable customers with existing premise or mixed estate deployments. Therefore, they will create the technical foundation for the emergence of next-generation cloud applications.
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