Speaking ahead of his Director Conference with key resellers at Celtic Manor Smith said, “users need solutions that fix problems and a demonstrable return on investment. It is our belief that the market has bottomed out since the decline in the global markets seen in October 2008 and we have seen a great response to these adverse conditions from our channel partners.”
Smith says that Mitel and its resellers are also taking advantage of their competitors woes.
“Companies such as Nortel, Siemens, Aastra and Avaya are all experiencing problems however we are providing the right environment for our channels to succeed. For example, our interest free offer for SMBs is winning them a lot of business and we would not have gained many of these deals without such an offer.
We can’t say that Mitel has not been impacted by the downturn but our channels are doing well; companies such as SpiriTel for example have achieved significant Mitel based wins and overall the channels are leaner and more focussed today.
In turn Mitel is providing the applications that resellers can use to demonstrate how a restructure of their users communications infrastructure can benefit their business.
The recent introduction for example of Mitel Dynamics Extensions provides tremendous productivity benefits by enhancing business mobility as well as showing them a way to keep the lights on for their business when people can’t get to work.”
Mitel is also set to launch a new application, HD Collaboration.
Smith, “HD Collaboration will enable users to quickly, simply and cost effectively conduct tele collaboration meetings with ‘face to face’ video, information sharing and presentations. Channel partners will have another reason to re-visit their customers and not just to those that have not yet implemented video solutions. We feel that HD Collaborations is also suited to the company that has already made the investment in large room conferencing suites where it can be effectively deployed for regular internal branch to branch meetings for example instead of the occasional use to which the larger suite are put.”
Smith concluded by saying that Mitel is well positioned to move forward, they have got the return on investment for their products right and that their channels are performing well.