Mitel’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy should not be seen as a sign “it has failed or become a major risk”, a top UK partner has argued as it pledged to continue actively pushing its technology.
The Canadian unified comms giant today confirmed it has entered into an agreement with some of its lenders and stakeholders to recapitalise its debt.
To implement the reorganisation, Mitel is seeking relief under Chapter 11 – a US process that provides a debtor with an opportunity to reorganise a business or capital structure while continuing normal business operations.
The move comes just 15 months after Mitel became the world’s second largest unified comms vendor via its acquisition of Unify.
“Right solution for our customers”
In a LinkedIn post (see below), James Banks, Group Technical Director at London-based Mitel Platinum partner Charterhouse Group, was quick to throw his weight behind the vendor.
Banks claimed there is “no reason” for customers to take action, instead stressing that Charterhouse will continue to recommend Mitel’s technology.
“We support a substantial base of Mitel customers in the UK and continue to add more both organically positioning Mitel as the right solution for our customers where appropriate and also taking on the support for existing Mitel solutions where clients elect to move support for their environment from another partner,” he wrote.
Mitel’s solutions remain “incredibly relevant” and it excels in a “substantial portion of the market where public UCaaS solutions often may not provide the required capabilities, resilience or control”, Banks said.
“Mitel are taking prudent action to reshape and restructure their business to allow them to best compete in a fast-changing landscape – removing some of the debt burden and receiving new investment are clearer strong enablers for that – Chapter 11 is a well trodden path and should not be interpreted as a sign that the business has failed or become a major risk.”
Mitel’s reorganisation is designed to deleverage its balance sheet to the tune of around by $1.15bn and cut annual cash interest expense to around $135m.
The vendor’s operations outside of the US, Canada, and select business segments in the UK are not included within the Chapter 11 filing, it stressed, adding that its global business will continue to operate in its normal course.
Mitel said it expects it to be a “swift, streamlined process with minimal disruption to customers, employees, vendors, or partners”.
In additional comment to IT Channel Oxygen, Banks said:
“I’m not surprised but we’re seeing plenty of activity from the usual suspects in terms of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt – with what feels like a narrative to use this restructuring as a lever to push existing users of Mitel toward other (their own, naturally) solutions to mitigate ‘risk’.
“To some extent this belies the position that Mitel have a number of “uniques” today in terms of what they can offer end users – proper support for hybrid, on-premise and private cloud architectures for example – and there are significant segments of the market that have real needs that are not elegantly met by the myriad of public cloud UCaaS providers.
“We’ve always believed in providing choice for our customers – and using three decades of experience to highlight for our clients the range of options available and relative strengths and weaknesses, empowering our customers to make an informed choice on the right route forward – for some customers that will include Mitel, for others it may not – but today’s restructuring announcement should not meaningfully impact that position, the same uniques that Mitel bring to the table, still apply.
“When I look at our business, we have invested really heavily in actually increasing our Mitel capabilities in recent years – driven by the needs of our customers, many of whom sit in that “critical” communications envelope where hybrid or on-premise approaches are essential – an example being the various slices of the UK public sector including healthcare, education and local government where so often “hybrid” provides either technical differentiation – or the ability to deliver significantly improved value from a commercial perspective versus pure consumption models.
“We can see that much of the channel are refocussing on “cloud only” with associated simplification of technical skillsets and commercial models, but I remain unconvinced that is a model that can work for all – one of our key points for differentiation is the ability to have those joined up more technical conversations and models to ensure that we are able to deliver complex hybrid solutions that effectively meet the needs of our customers without compromise.”
