Mitel bought ShoerTel yesterday. I looked around for news coverage of it, and beyond the news announcement being largely rewritten, only two insightful pieces came out. The best was from a sales channel partner of both, Matrix, and the other came from analyst Zeus Kerravala. Given I wasn't briefed by either company, I'll reserve my thoughts on the why, the what and the when.
Instead I'll comment on what I can deduce, and welcome the opportunity to talk to both companies CEOs.
- The big get bigger. The challenge for smaller players is how to keep the sales channel excited to sell them.
- Increased pressure on Ring Central and 8x8's product, marketing, and sales teams to both innovate and keep their sales channel agents and reps happy.
- ShoreTel's API platform and WebRTC friendliness could be accelerated in more business environments, It makes Vonage's buy of Nexmo an even smarter move.
- Helps set valuation for other players in the business VoIP space based on customers, sales volumes, churn and IP.
I'm trying to figure out how this impacts Broadsoft, as this is a merger of two customers who use some parts of Broadsoft's advanced telecom stack in their platforms (not easily deduced from Broadsoft's website but from industry sources).
Initially I see no impact to Broadsoft as they continue to own and dominate the incumbent telco market. With both Mitel and Shoretel having their own deployments on Broadsoft switches and app servers as far as I can tell for Broadsoft there's no customer win or loss and only further revenue received from licensing royalties. That said, if the merger of the two tel's brings customers over from non-Broadsoft platforms like 8x8 or RingCentral, then Broadsoft will win.
I'll keep VoIPwatching...