Mitel has announced it has secured a fourth successive contract with Sourcewell, extending its business relationship to 14 years.
The contract means that Sourcewell, a trusted service cooperative — and the 50,000 government, education, and nonprofit organisations it represents through member agencies — will have access to a broad range of Mitel’s UC offerings through ready-to-use contracts that streamline the purchasing process.
Sue Anders, Public Sector and SLED General Manager at Mitel, commented:
We are honored Sourcewell continues to trust Mitel as a preferred provider, and we look forward to continuing to support its members with the modern communications and collaboration solutions they need to deliver important work in their communities. As we have seen over the past decade, cooperative purchasing is such a beneficial tool for public organizations of all sizes as it saves time by streamlining the RFP process while ensuring great value.”
Mitel offers businesses, nonprofits and public sector organisations flexibility and choice with a portfolio encompassing private cloud and on-site comms systems, contact centre, collaboration, mass notification applications, business phones, devices, and accessories.
“Our top priority is to help the agencies we serve to save time and money by providing streamlined access to world-class suppliers who offer choice, peace of mind, and value,” added David Duhn, Supplier Development Supervisor at Sourcewell.
One of the world’s largest purchasing cooperatives, Sourcewell offers agencies access to reliable and enterprise-grade suppliers through nationally solicited contracts. Each supplier is thoroughly assessed through a competitive process to ensure procurement requirements are met or exceeded.
“Mitel has helped us deliver on this commitment as a trusted communications supplier to agencies across the nation for over a decade, and after a formal and comprehensive bidding process, we are happy to continue this beneficial relationship with a new contract for another four years.”
Mitel’s 2023 so Far
Mitel began its year announcing its negotiations to buy Unify, the UC and collaboration and communication and collaboration services businesses (CCS) of the Atos group.
The transaction aims to strengthen Mitel’s position in multiple areas worldwide and reaffirm the business’s commitment to providing choice and flexibility to its customers.
The transaction entails Mitel acquiring Unify’s voice platforms, collaboration and contact centre products, device and endpoint portfolio, and related intellectual property. Unify would also bring a Managed Services business to affirm further Mitel’s ability to deliver UC customers choices.
Nick Riggott, Mitel’s Head of UKISA, explained to UC Today in May why the Unify acquisition represented such a “significant opportunity” for Mitel.
“The Unify deal is incredibly exciting and is ultimately an acceleration of our strategy,” Riggott said. “We have a significant opportunity with the acquisition. Together, we’ll be able to be the prominent UC leader globally with a collective customer base of more than 75 million users in over 100 countries and a channel community of more than 5,500 global partners.”
2023 also saw continued success for Mitel’s RingCentral partnership. Mitel shocked the UC and collaboration industry when it announced its unique UCaaS partnership with RingCentral in 2021. RingCentral became Mitel’s “exclusive UCaaS partner” after the pair revealed a new collaboration. The deal involved Mitel nudging its customer base of 35 million users towards RingCentral’s Message Video Phone (MVP) platform.
Riggott also discussed the RingCentral partnership with UC Today, highlighting that Mitel “deliver those solutions via our partners into the market in a private cloud, an on-premises or a hybrid solution of the two.”
“The way we saw the market moving led to a requirement for more of a non-one-size-fits-all approach,” he added.
Almost two years later, the relationship’s “unique depth” has blossomed even further.
“We’re able to focus on the areas that we’re really good at,” explained Riggott. “We’re brilliant at call control, collaboration and contact centre software and the support in technologies. Other organisations are better placed to be able to offer those services to any customers should they want to go down a public cloud route.”
