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Mitel (News - Alert) provides of communications solutions ranging from basic office communications systems to IP Phones, to innovative IP trading turret solutions to sophisticated unified communications product suites. Their customers range from small, single site offices to large geographically dispersed enterprises.

 

Mitel operates from over 100 locations in over 90 countries and services their customer base through a network of over 1,500 value-added resellers and partners.

 

In recent news, the company expanded its unified communications suite and added telepresence to its offering.

 

Jim Davies is chief technology officer for the company, and he was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to respond to a series of questions we posed about the coming year.

 

JD: In 2008 Mitel celebrated its first year anniversary since the merger with Inter-Tel (News - Alert), moving the company from a successful integration phase into an execution phase for growth, based on delivering business (unified) communications products to our customers with practical and quantifiable benefits.

 

Some of the key highlights include:

 

JD: The delivery of the Mitel Communications Suite, a complete software based communications system for business, integrated on a single server for data center deployment.

 

JD: With the current economic environment, unified communications solutions are even more important in helping companies prepare their businesses for the times and ensure they are positioned ahead of the curve when the economy rebounds.

 

Mitel’s communications products do well to achieve a quick ROI for businesses of all sizes. Collaboration applications, teleworking, and mobile integration can help to reduce costs, decrease the need for travel, and improve employee efficiency. While Mitel Managed Services allow businesses to invest without the upfront, capital expense. A managed service arrangement also provides flexibility and supports upgrade or replacement on contract renewals as the technology or software changes.

 

JD: Yes. Indications are that this administration will put some focus on investment to upgrade the infrastructure, both as a policy objective and as a result of the economic recovery plan, which includes communications.

 

JD: The IP communications industry is undergoing transition again, as it did from PBX (News - Alert) to IP Telephony. We are now transitioning from IP Telephony to a much broader unified communications market. While more subtle in technology evolution than IP Telephony was, this is much more profound in its impact to how people communicate and how business processes integrate with communications. The benefits and innovation in this cycle are just beginning to be felt in the industry.

 

JD: Budgets and spending are tighter and under greater scrutiny during the current economic slowdown. However, projects that can return savings to the bottom line quickly, contribute to cost cutting (like travel), or provide measurable ability to be more competitive will be given priority. Applications such as conferencing and collaboration, teleworking, and mobile integration all can result in quick ROI coupled with improved employee efficiency. These types of solutions will continue to do well in the market.

 

Typically in times of economic slowdown the public sector can grow in relative importance (federal, state, local, schools, hospitals, etc). Spending in certain sectors will be maintained or increased (while the private sector holds back). With a number of western governments looking to stimulate the economy budgets in some of these areas may actually increase.

 

JD: Mitel has been a provider of business communications systems since 1975. We take a pragmatic approach to unified communications and focus on solving real business issues for customers. Since business communications is our only business, we are entirely focused on delivering value to SMB and enterprise clients, not promoting architectures that protect or advance other elements of our portfolio. We respect the IT investment decisions our customers make and offer products that add value to existing infrastructures, whether it is evolving an existing digital PBX to IP Telephony or integrating an IP Telephony solution with an existing business application.

 

JD: History has shown that in slow economic times unexpected things happen, out of opportunity or desperation. It will be interesting to see how the industry community evolves and look for strange alliances to emerge.

 

Also look for a trend in companies transitioning more tech spend from a capex to an opex model, making managed services offers a more popular purchasing option.