A strong growth accompanied by an equally strong development of the sales channel. This is how the story of can be told Mitel, vendor specializing in unified communications technologies. As Danilo Piatti, CEO of Mitel Italia explains to Tech Company 360: “Just this year we are celebrating our fiftieth birthday, we are a rather long-lived company that has always dealt with telecommunications, which on the infrastructural side is moving more and more towards those logics of application convergence that are now part of the sector. We are in fact part of a global market worth 54 billion dollars a year and in which the traditional part represents only the tip of the iceberg, while collaboration and videoconferencing applications weigh more and more”.
Mitel’s strategy
Mitel, which also comes from the world of voice and from networks, has for some time now also faced the cloud and on collaboration platforms. Thanks to a series of assets developed entirely in-house, but also with a precise acquisition strategy, including that of Astra Communication and the entire infrastructure branch of Ericsson. More recently, the group has advanced the proposal to acquire Unify: an operation which, if successful, would considerably increase the size of the group. In this context, Mitel’s strategic choice was clear: “For several years now, Mitel’s choice has been to adopt a completely partner-driven model, this means that 100% of Mitel Italia’s turnover is conveyed through channels. It was an important transition at the time, we have now reached maturity and there is a new fact, namely that this ecosystem is growing at a really important pace. Today the onboarding of new subjects is the order of the day and in the last 2 and a half years we have more than tripled the number of companies that are part of our channel. Growth occurred in all three segments managed by Mitel: SMB, mid market and enterprise”. In Italy, for historical reasons, the enterprise market is especially developed, with particular reference to the PA, so much so that over 2 thirds of the turnover comes from this segment.
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The new partners
But the vendor is also growing strongly in the private world, thanks to an organization based on some vertical segments of industry: in addition to government, there are also healthcare, hospitality (hotels and cruise ships), financial services and retail. “This strategy is giving us a lot of satisfaction, for our partners this should encourage them to have a vertical philosophy, or rather to specialize in products and solutions that address the needs of specific vertical markets. This allows him to access in a much more streamlined way a whole series of technical resources and financial support, which are increasingly being organized according to this logic”. galready today, however, the partners of Mitel Italia (over 100 active in the peninsula) are very different compared to the recent past: “Since the companies we address are different, so is the type of partner. We come from a history of companies very focused on the infrastructural part of telephone systems. That has always been our core and is an important part of our business. However, it is interesting to note that, as the products evolve, companies that have their core business in the cloud, or in the application part, have also entered our channel. In addition, there are also companies that deal with process consultancy. There are also telecommunications operators who have always been structurally part of our ecosystem”.
Service opportunities
These old and new partners are supported by a partner program structured on 4 levels, focused not only on the level of business generated, but also and above all on technical skills. “It is estimated that out of 100,000 UCC products, the induced on added services is at least 3 times as much. The interest for the partner is therefore to develop skills around our technologies to capitalize on the investment made in terms of services. Another strong point of ours is that Mitel has made a very clear choice in terms of channel model: we support them where necessary and required, but we do not enter the service business directly. So this area represents a great opportunity for them, even in Italy, where we have 3,000 certainly active customers, as well as a potential base (names registered in the registry) which is at least three times as much”. An important role in the indirect strategy is also played by distributors, as demonstrated by a recent strategic agreement also signed with Esprinet. “Esprinet represents a strategic agreement that we entered into last year, precisely to further strengthen the group of our distributors. For us, distribution plays a fundamental role in scaling our partner ecosystem: if we continue to have such a demand for partners, not everyone will be able or willing to collaborate directly with Mitel”.
Il Mitel Next in Italia
Around 60 channel companies have participated in the past few weeks Mitel Next, an annual conference dedicated to partners, which was held for the first time in Italy. “This year the event has been regionalized in some strategic countries including Italy, also in recognition of the growth that has taken place in the country. 25% of the companies that took part in this event were brand new, i.e. subjects that were entering the Mitel world for the first time. On this occasion, the channel operators had the opportunity to listen to the insights received from our executives onMitel’s global strategy, technology roadmap and channel program. One of our private customers has provided valuable content on green technologies, which is becoming increasingly important in the PA sector. What requests have we received? Partners are asking us for help on refocusing in vertical segments, as some have so far adopted a cross-cutting strategy. Some investment from Mitel is expected, then there is always the typical request for support in Italian. What is certain is that in recent months we have grown as a market share in the enterprise by 35%. If this expansion continues, it will necessarily have to be supported by an increasing number of partners”, concludes Piatti.