February 13, 2023 • 30 mins
TalkingHeadz is an interview format series featuring the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode, we check in with David Petts, SVP Cloud to Cloud Business Group at Mitel.
Our podcast was recorded just a few days after Mitel announced its acquisition of Atos Unify. We do discuss it, but there's more unknowns than knowns.
David Petts is a seasoned sales and customer success executive with a proven track record of driving revenue growth and profit improvements across multiple product segments. With extensive expertise in enterprise servers, PC's, systems management software, business mobility, unified communication, and content licensing, David has a comprehensive understanding of the technology industry.
David is well-versed in adapting go-to-market strategies to the specific dynamics of different geographic. David is a team-oriented leader who values collaboration and is dedicated to achieving success for both his team and the company.
Mitel is a leading global provider of communications and collaboration solutions. Founded in 1972, the company has a long history of innovation in the telecommunications industry and has grown to serve customers in more than 100 countries around the world.
Mitel's product portfolio includes a wide range of solutions for businesses of all sizes, from small and medium-sized enterprises to large enterprises and government agencies. In addition to its core products, Mitel is also known for its commitment to customer service and support.
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Episode Transcript
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Dave Michels (00:00):
Hey welcome to Talking here, Snake Evan and I
(00:14):
will be talking with David petsfrom Mitel. But before that,
Evan, I gotta say, you know, atthe recent cloud Communications
Alliance, you did a fantasticjob of telling people how to do
social. I learned so much fromyour session. I thought that was
great.
Evan Kirstel (00:28):
I've been telling you for years, but for some
reason, you finally decided tolisten. And I'll give you a rare
compliment. You had your firstlive stream at Dave Michaels on
LinkedIn. It was calledinfluence me. Yep. Which is
getting influencers on to changeyour mind.
Dave Michels (00:44):
I realized no one's talking to the
influencers. And so you'retalking to all these different
companies, other people talkingto companies and says, I know
some of the influencers. I'll dothat once.
Evan Kirstel (00:51):
I've tried to change your mind for a decade,
I've failed miserably. I stillhave an Android.
Dave Michels (00:58):
You have a microphone, you seem to have so
much more credibility when youexplain this to me. But it was
interesting, the kinds ofquestions you were getting. And
I think we should have a littlebrief recap here because it was
very interesting. What the helldo we do with Twitter? Is
Twitter dying? I mean, a lot ofpeople are abandoning it. The
system is not as stable. What'syour advice? I mean, you're
still active on Twitter. What doyou think?
Evan Kirstel (01:19):
I think we're at peak Twitter and I don't think
there's anywhere to go butslowly downhill. In fact, the
service itself seems degradedthe responsiveness, the
glitches, there strangeanomalies using the service.
There's things that have beendiscontinued, like the review
newsletter, I mean, had 20,000Review newsletter, which
(01:41):
luckily, I managed to take awaybut these gradual the third
party, which is off one day, andyeah, third party clients, it's
still chaotic. And and whileMusk has these grand schemes and
ambitions, why don't you get theproduct, get the service, right?
And then focus on all thesethese wider dreams. So I think
(02:02):
people are gonna get annoyedover time and gradually move on.
Look, I mean, things last a longtime, we still have Yahoo email
ids and aol.com as a thing andfax machine. So I think Twitter
will be around but whether it'sthe hotbed of engagement and and
media journalism that it oncewas, I really doubt it can
(02:25):
sustain
Dave Michels (02:26):
that that's got to be painful to say that
Evan Kirstel (02:28):
LinkedIn is going going well, and engagement is
high. And Microsoft is notruined it, thank goodness. And
your live stream, for example,had dozens and dozens of
comments.
Dave Michels (02:38):
But that was eye opening. Because of course, I
put your advice. I streamed intoboth Twitter and LinkedIn at the
same time, and LinkedIn did havemuch more engagement. And I've
noticed that on a number ofposts I've done and so you know,
thanks, Ilan, I didn't reallyknow about LinkedIn before. So
Evan Kirstel (02:53):
the next battleground is Reddit. So we're
gonna have to up our game. Geton Reddit. And you should check
out Cora Cora is an amazingcontent repository, people
asking q&a s and upvoting and,you know, no nonsense
Dave Michels (03:08):
information repository, amazing information
repositories. Let's get to ourinterview with David.
Evan Kirstel (03:13):
Yeah, he has a lot of info to share. Looking
forward to it.
god (03:16):
Talking it's it's a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration, your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or attalking points.com. That's
(03:38):
points with the Z and Evancurse. school.com. That's ki r s
t e l.
Dave Michels (03:45):
Welcome to toffee has today we have with us David
pets. Evan, you probably knewDavid back at shortfill. Is that
right?
Evan Kirstel (03:52):
Well, I do have David David has a long and
distinguished career short sellNokia, HP. So David, you're
pretty old, I think essentially.
Right.
David Petts (04:04):
Thanks. Thanks for that introduction. Yeah, I've
been around a bit. Let's put itthat way. But yeah, so as you
said shorter was the lead inconnection to my hotel. HP and,
and even before
Dave Michels (04:17):
you miss that connection, I mean, it's just so
easy. You work in a company, youget acquired and you end up at a
new company, but you didn't dothat.
David Petts (04:23):
That's true. That's a nature of acquisitions, I
guess, you know, in thatparticular circumstance, there
might our team were acquiringshorter and they elected to keep
the executive team intact. Somyself and actually myself and
all of my colleagues at shorterhave moved on to other things at
that point.
Dave Michels (04:39):
That motel which is during my time in your
career, motel was kind of thekind of like the Borg we ought
to talk to you about we want totalk we want to talk about my
tail we want to talk about thebig news with a toast that was
just announced. But first I wantto talk a little bit about short
tail. Now when you think aboutshort tail, I have a feeling and
I'm just guessing here, you kindof have a smile
David Petts (04:59):
in it. context have fond memories of a good time and
I was with the short sale forabout seven years. Obviously the
company was around longer thanthat. I enjoyed it short. I
think we had had a good companyand I think Mitel acquired a
great asset. I enjoyed my timethere so to that degree,
absolutely look back with it.
Dave Michels (05:18):
How many CEOs Did you work for at sore toe
David Petts (05:21):
to to Peter Blackmore, and then Don Joe's?
Dave Michels (05:25):
And I'm guessing one of them you liked?
David Petts (05:29):
I like the both Peter and I actually didn't know
each other from HP days. I knewPeter before I went
Dave Michels (05:37):
through that avenue said, yeah, he's PRN.
Yeah, I didn't connect that.
David Petts (05:42):
And even before that Compaq, which because HP
acquired compact. So Peter, I'veknown for a long time, about I
enjoyed working with both. Peterwas only about a year of my
time, but short also longer timewith Don as at the helm. And
certainly with Dawn, it was thetransformative period where we
were really driving the companyto focus much more on the UCaaS
(06:04):
transformation that wasoccurring. We were very, very
heavily US centric, as I'm sureyou know. It was a fun
transformation project with itwith a company that ultimately
ended up in the acquisition frommitre.
Evan Kirstel (06:16):
I love the Compaq reference, Dave still uses a 3d
six daily driver
David Petts (06:22):
at Tokyo smile. So I don't know whether you ever
saw these. But John Cleese andthe adverts for Compaq they were
one among the funniest adverts.
Evan Kirstel (06:31):
I do remember.
Please tell me you you got tomeet John Cleves as part of that
advertising campaign.
David Petts (06:37):
Oh, gosh, I wish I was not in acting. But that
would have been good.
Evan Kirstel (06:40):
So you grew revenue 250 million in four
years and software sales to 400million at two different
companies. So you reduce salesexpense as a percentage of
revenue, you have very creativego to market. So where does this
innovation and thinking comefrom? Tell us about your
trajectory over the last decadeor so?
David Petts (07:01):
Yeah, sure. Well, so the things you're referring
to there a couple a couple ofareas where I spent many years
at a combination of Compaq andHP and my role. This is more
than you ask. But originally, itwas very operational. I was in
the supply chain and operationsside, but I moved over to sales
fairly quickly. I've beenthrough I've had the benefit and
opportunity to go through a lotof guises of Compaq as they grew
(07:23):
from a PC company to a broadserver company to then acquiring
dec, adding services, then beingacquired by HP. So those
experiences all helped for me asto seeing opportunities, both in
companies coming together. Buteven in organic evolution of
companies. I've always enjoyedproblem solving and business
(07:45):
problems. In particular, thosegrowth things, you know, where
are you short, I was theexample. One of the charters
that I was tasked with duringthe company by the board was to
improve the efficiency of thesales team, you know, the
productivity, and you know,sales expenses, a percent of
revenue, and so forth. That wasa unique challenge that formed
(08:05):
both partner strategies, as wellas our own sales, Team design
and approach. So differentthings in different places. But
I enjoy a business solvingbusiness problems. That's what
leads to a lot of theseoutcomes. I guess,
Dave Michels (08:16):
I got a business problem here, I got a problem, I
want you to see if you can solvefor me, because, you know, HP
was obviously a box company yousold boxes. Hopefully it's fair
not to insult in short tail isclearly a Box Company, although
the transformation you weretalking about earlier undergone
was trying to become a cloudcompany, which is part of why
have Mitel acquired it. Michael,of course, has a legacy as a
(08:39):
cloud company. And then lastyear, you've already mentioned
this RingCentral thing became,you know, remains a cloud
company. So my problem, thequestion for you to solve is how
do you get to be the Cloud toCloud Guy with all this box
background?
David Petts (08:53):
Well, I haven't already mentioned so I'll
correct you a one thing HP is abox company is somewhat of a
mischaracterization. Forexample, I ran the software
business in the Americas at HPand globally. That was a very
significant business. So I'vegot a lot of experience in
software both from that as wellas UCaaS with with short vowel
and SAS more generally, we arebetween the two. In terms of my
(09:17):
history shorter waspredominantly around that how do
we transform from a UC pure as apure with a more on premise
orientation to a UCaaS piece. Soa lot of our learnings from that
are very applicable to whatwe're doing now. The ring
partnership RingCentralpartnership we have, then the
role that I've been doing forthe last 14 months or so
(09:39):
specifically, is about how do wetransition our current UCaaS
customers our UC as a servicecustomers from several different
platforms that we have at Mitelover to the RingCentral
solution. And so, frankly, youknow, that's not got a lot to do
with why UCaaS it's got a lot todo with why migrate get from one
(10:00):
place to another and how do wemake that an attractive
proposition to customers? But alot shorter answers your
question, I've got a lot ofsoftware experience from running
the software sales team, theUCaaS transformation in short
out over many years. And that'spart of what led me to where I
am interesting.
Dave Michels (10:16):
I appreciate you correcting me because when I say
Box Company, it was meant to bea little bit of antagonistic.
But the problem is, we don'tknow what to call this stuff
anymore, right? Because you justsaid, you know, it's software.
So when Mitel said that, whenthey announced the agreement
with RingCentral, which ofcourse, you're in the right in
the middle of the conclusion alot from a lot of people was
that Mitel was going to be apremises based company only, and
(10:37):
they're gonna die. And neitherone of those statements are true
or correct. And and so what howdo you describe Mitel? Is a
premises is a private cloud,what do you say about Mitel? And
then, of course, you're in themiddle of that RingCentral part.
And so you're kind of what isthe cloud to cloud part of your
title?
David Petts (10:55):
Sure. Yeah. No, great question. And actually, to
your point, even my tiles,solutions or any solution, and
you see, there's a hugecomponent with software, that a
lot of that there's a physicalbox that is enabling the
solution to work, but thesoftware is a key. But
nevertheless, you know, toanswer your question, the way in
(11:15):
which companies customers accessall of their great view
deliverables of a unifiedcommunication solution has
evolved over time.
Traditionally, you would argueit was pure on premise where
customers bought the solution,put it into their premise and
operated and managed it right.
But then, you know, over time,there was virtualization, how
(11:35):
did you then abstract some ofthe software from the physical
appliances and separate the two?
That in turn, wouldn't sayspecifically evolved? But there
was also then how do I deliverthat from an external
infrastructure rather than myown datacenter, if you want to
call it that, whether that's aset of appliances in a cupboard,
or a true sort of data centerfor a company? So there's
(11:55):
depends how you want to callthat is that cloud is that
hosted solution? Is it just anoutsourced data center
management. So the ability ofabstracting the software and
changing the solution over timeas an enable different ways of
consuming the solution all theway through, including UCaaS,
you know, as a service, and ofcourse, you see as a service is
(12:17):
multi tenant in nature, allcustomers have essentially the
same solution. And it's evolvedat the pace, the vendor decides
to evolve it, you would arguethat a dedicated cloud solution
or single instance, thatcontrols are much more with the
customer in terms of things likemaintenance, Windows and
upgrades and changes. So there'sa potpourri of different ways
(12:39):
you can consume the solution.
And we through the partnership.
And of course, through all ofthe offerings we have,
generically, we want to enableall of the different solution
types for our customers tochoose from in your customer
lifecycle management kind ofplay.
Evan Kirstel (12:57):
Absolutely. And so how is the partnership with
RingCentral? Going? Can youcharacterize the status on that
go to market?
David Petts (13:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's two different componentsto this, which aren't
necessarily obvious. Or maybethey are, there's a cloud to
cloud piece which I mentioned,you know, that's been my primary
focus until for the last 1214months or so. And then there's
the premise to cloud and thatdistinction between those two is
really customers making theirdecision to move from an on
(13:25):
premise environment to UCaaS forthe first time, versus those
that are have already made thatdecision. But because of the
partnership and making adecision to move from our
solution to the MVP solutionwith RingCentral, our partner, I
would say the short answerquestion is it's going well,
that's the firstcharacterization. I would also
be the first to admit that, youknow, in any new partnership,
(13:45):
we've learned a lot in the last,you know, 1214 months, how to
work together, how to work withour partners, how to improve,
you know, efficiency of processand proposition, what it is
customers are looking for, andhow to join the pitch, who's
doing what, where, to whom, andhow you know, so there's been a
lot and a lot of learnings frommy perspective, you know, very
(14:07):
successful first 1214
Dave Michels (14:12):
RingCentral partnership with Mitel is
unique. There's nothing likethat. I think you're the fourth
one with Avaya being the firstone, but the other ones were all
modeled kind of on the Avayamodel where they Avaya basically
became master agent. That's aword I learned from short tail
actually got its channel and itsdirect teams to sell RingCentral
(14:34):
or by a cloud officer should bemore accurate. In the Mitel.
case, it's different, right? Inthe Mitel case, it's not Mitel
cloud office, it's RingCentral.
And this was the first timeRingCentral have done this where
the RingCentral is kind ofRingCentral team is more or less
responsible for the sale. I'mguessing your role when you talk
about how you've learned themistakes and whatever in the
early part of this transfer. I'massuming I'm guessing your role
(14:55):
wasn't there in the beginning.
I'm guessing that if therewithout you needing some sort of
Ambassador to help thesecustomers move over to
RingCentral. Is that accurate?
David Petts (15:04):
Yes, on both fronts. And in as you mentioned,
that uniqueness of the MitelRingCentral partnership, it is a
moving of the customers to thecore RingCentral MVP solution,
managed and sold by RingCentral.
In the case of the otherpartnerships you mentioned, I
think of it almost as awholesale or white label
solution, and you know, theselling and so forth is done by
(15:27):
Avaya, and so forth. Just forclarity, we've actually, again,
we've just made some changes inthis, but I'm gonna give a
little bit of context andhistory. So over the last 12 to
14 months, we've sort of had adivergent path in the context of
the premise to Cloud has beenworking the mitosis role has
(15:49):
been principally working withour partners, and through our
partners to the customers, wherethose customers are seeking a
UCaaS solution as as theirjourney and evolution of their
own decision making and solutionset, how to guide them over to
RingCentral as our as ourpartner, and how to position
(16:09):
that as the our recommended andsupported choice, then
RingCentral does the naturalselling of that to the customer
just as they would any othercustomer. In the cloud or cloud
side, it's actually been alittle bit different. We worked
with RingCentral, to enable ateam that I've managed to sell
the migration. So we've beendoing the selling the
(16:31):
positioning of MVP, but becauseof our we have customer success
managers and so forth, we have avery intimate relationship, we
have a direct contract that in aUCaaS world, that contract is
directly with the end customer.
And obviously the partners areagents and master agents, as you
described earlier, we had a muchstronger involvement in defining
(16:54):
the propositions understandingfrom customers firsthand what
their challenges were inconsidering this, and a lot of
it, I would say is less aboutselecting MVP as a viable
solution. I mean, at the end ofthe day, they're highly regarded
well recommended by companieslike the people like yourselves
as as a leading solution. It wasmore about I've got to go
(17:17):
through a change and who's goingto manage that change? How do I
move from platform a Platform B,what does that mean for my
employees, my administrationteam? How do I get from A to B?
And how do I get there? And theleast painful way?
Dave Michels (17:29):
Is this transition you're describing as a possible?
Yes,
David Petts (17:33):
yeah, we've we've successfully done it with many,
many customers already in thefirst year. Plus, we've put in,
I'll give you an example, weworked with both ourselves. And
with RingCentral. This is justone example to create what we
call migration assistancepackage or program. And that
map, you're one example that iswe're able to export the
(17:54):
customer's currentconfiguration, call routing,
call flows, your userslocations, etc, etc, from our
cloud solution, and in a formatthat's importable by
RingCentral, into theirconfiguration system. So we
lower the overhead of anycustomer having to do all that
work. So that's just one exampleof how we can lower their we
(18:16):
can't make it zero. But we cantake away a lot of the pain that
you would associate with movingfrom one platform a to Platform
B. And by the way, we can applythat not just to cloud to cloud
migrations from Mitel toRingCentral. But in a broader
customer lifecycle managementworld, we can apply that we've
got customers that might want tomove to our one of our
(18:36):
subscription offerings, how dothey move from an existing
premise platform to asubscription package? Their
learnings have been veryhelpful, but hopefully they've
that that clarifies what I mean,in some of the learnings we've
had.
Dave Michels (18:49):
I want to back up a little bit to the premises
concept of what my till isperceived, as explained a little
more what that means. I mean, asmy team is still making
hardware, so making physicalappliances, or is it strictly
software? Are most of theseimplementations literally on
prem? Are they in a private datacenter or private cloud? Or are
they in AWS? Tell me about thecore? My tell Prem solution, and
(19:13):
what do you call it?
David Petts (19:14):
Yeah, I think Well, I think the short answer your
question is all of the above.
You know, as I was saying alittle earlier, there are
multiple different ways you canconsume a solution from my
hotel. And yes, there's anelement of even down to the
physical device, you know,handsets are still a thing. Some
more customers, or somecustomers are going to soft
phone environments, but physicalphones are clearly on premise,
(19:37):
if you want to call it that.
Yes, there are abilities forcompanies to still buy on
premise traditional, if you wantto call it that on premise
solutions, where they havewhatever hardware is required,
and of course, the software intheir own servers and
infrastructure on their premise.
But there are also abstractedthe software can be housed in an
(19:57):
ad AWS or similar kind ofenvironment, either managed by
the customer or managed by athird party. And so that could
be a hosted solution managed bya, through a managed service for
the customer do it themselves.
But instead of it being on theirpremise, it's in a shared
infrastructure or you know, anAWS kind of environment. All of
(20:19):
those options are available, asI said, with Ring, ring is our
now partner for a multi tenantUCaaS environment.
Dave Michels (20:26):
I'm still trying to figure out though, is, is
Mitel still making physicalboxes or appliances? Or is it
only software these days?
David Petts (20:34):
Yeah, that there are some appliances, but
predominantly, it's software, abit of both, I would say more,
the hardware is more of anenabler where where needed and
or where that option ispreferred. Excellent.
Evan Kirstel (20:48):
So Dave, you haven't talked about the big
eight US announcement yet? Isthat still under wraps? Or can
we dive into that big news?
David Petts (20:57):
What is big news, that's for sure, there's an
element of under wraps in thecontext of with any transaction
of this size, there is a periodof time between the announcement
which we made yesterday throughto the actual close of the
transaction, there are someregulatory and other procedural
pieces that need to go through.
But for sure, it's not a secretat this point. You know, and I
(21:17):
think it's a tremendousopportunity for Mitel. And the
two companies coming together,very complimentary, you know, we
have, you know, I would positionMitel, as historically or
traditionally, SMB through tosort of mid market, perhaps
touching into the enterprisespace, one would argue that
unify is more of that mid marketand all the way through to large
(21:38):
enterprise. So there's a verycomplimentary expansion of our
technologies and through it,your addressable market, from a
customer size standpoint,geographically, there's a great
fit, unify have a very stronggeographic presence in Western
Europe, South America, manyparts, somewhere, they have a
much stronger footprint thanthan my dad has. Conversely, we
(22:01):
have a stronger US footprintthan unified. So geographically,
it's very complimentary as well.
If you think about some of thethings that this brings to the
party, which as you'd imagine,aligns to that sort of
enterprise Centricity that unifyhas managed service, we have a
relatively small managed serviceor professional services
(22:23):
structure, unify has a verylarge managed service. So lots
of very complimentary things,both geographically addressable
market and skills andcapabilities, there, and then
you've got the channel. Andthere are different channel
types associated with thosedifferent businesses. So a
complementary coming together ofchannels to so I'm very excited
about it. Coincidentally, Iguess we've sort of touched on
(22:44):
this earlier, but both companiesalready have a partnership with
RingCentral, slightly differentnatures. But again, the strategy
that each company has chosen isvery aligned. I'm very excited
about what this opportunitybrings together.
Evan Kirstel (22:57):
Let's talk about the mobile collaboration suite,
you know, obviously, voicemessaging video, where are we
with your portfolio? What areyou seeing getting most
traction? What applications andservices are getting most of
usage and engagement byemployees like what's hot these
days, and Mito
David Petts (23:13):
video and messaging, it's not that new,
but it still feels new in termsof the adoption rate and use
case. But yeah, certainly, videocollaboration, desktop sharing,
and collaboration is a stillhot, we're still seeing and take
up of my team meetings and theMiCollab. And all of the
elements that enable that, aboveand beyond, you know, the
(23:35):
classic voice call controlaspects of a UC solution. So I'd
argue that's still there,integration of those
applications. Again, not hugelymy domain of expertise, but our
cloud link, and enablingsimplified integration of
applications. With that you'reabstracting that from a physical
deployment is exciting. We'reseeing more, I didn't without
(24:00):
describe this as desires, if youlike, from customers around
understanding sort of analyticsand information about how their
solutions are being used, andhow to optimize the use of I
think there's some opportunitiesin that direction as well.
Evan Kirstel (24:14):
Let's talk branding. You know, my tell is
very story brand, pretty wellknown, particularly
internationally, in so manyindustries, very happy with a
motel brand that's going to bearound, I imagine
Dave Michels (24:25):
is going to be around as the question. Ah, good
one.
David Petts (24:29):
Well, so what I can say at this point, I don't know
about the overall branding, butcertainly as the company's
coming together will be that theheadquarters will be out of arc
and otter HQ for Mitel inCanada, and I think we've
already shared that our CEO willbe the CEO of the combined
companies, but in terms of thebranding down to individual
(24:50):
platforms and solutions, work tobe done on that and that'll be
part of what happens when we gothrough the integration.
Dave Michels (24:56):
That's a tough one I have to say because I said HLS
earlier, but actually If theunify brand, and at first they
tell us was going to get rid ofthe unify brand, they worked
really hard when the acquisitionfirst happened to get rid of it.
And then they realized maybethey want to sell this division.
So they brought it back andbrought the brand back. But it's
a great brand. I really likedthe unified brand.
Evan Kirstel (25:14):
And it was a great product. As you may remember, we
were on a jaunt to Bermuda for abriefing where we talked to all
of the eight people at the timethat the unify people. And this
is a few years ago, and I was soimpressed with the application,
it was way ahead of its timeeven then. So really interesting
to see that out there in thewider world.
David Petts (25:36):
I mean, one of the things I've This is a funny for
you, I guess. But when Mitelacquired short arm, we were
wrestling with branding, wesuggested that why don't we just
take a bit of our name and a bitof your name, we could use sure
from us and tell from you and wecould just get caught it showed.
Clearly, clearly it went downthe other way. And they said,
well, let's use let's take thatstrategy. But when you use my
(25:56):
from us and tell from Yeah.
We'll see how it goes on thisone.
Dave Michels (26:01):
Yeah, no. Mitel has been around for a long time.
It's a good brand. And ofcourse, they did the relaunch of
the brand with the new logo, andI must have been 2018 2020
around there. And then theunified brand had a big launch
probably just a few years beforethat around there like that. Two
great brands, I think theunified brand is better known in
Europe. Yeah, that's gonna be atough question. If you if you
(26:22):
keep them both, or get rid ofone. I'm also curious what
you're going to do with thehandsets. I think I have a
feeling I know how that's gonnaplay out. I think the motels.
Evan Kirstel (26:30):
You know, I think we should talk about talking
heads talking points brandingday, it's very confusing. Is it
talking heads? Is it talkingpoints? Is it buffalo
communications, you know, youneed to get your branding? Yes,
I
Dave Michels (26:41):
have too many brands. If you don't have
enough, Evan, that's anotherepisode.
Evan Kirstel (26:45):
Well, let's get back to the show. So let's talk
about the wider landscape for amoment before we kind of
conclude, obviously, Mitel saw ahuge uptick during the pandemic
and remote work andtelecommuting and remote agents.
What are you seeing now? Isthere some degree of
retrenchment is it isn't movinginto hybrid? What are your
customers and partners tellingyou it might tell?
David Petts (27:06):
Ya, I would say as you said, Evan, there's clearly
the pandemic drove verydefinitive behavior, as that
has, I wouldn't say completelypast that. We've seen many, many
companies, not necessarilyreturning to office space
working and retaining the remotenot because of the pandemic, but
because they found it beneficialto both their employees and them
(27:27):
as a business effect. My tell isvery much in that model here. So
there's still a demand for thatdistributed and remote working.
But there's equally your ongoingdemand for Office oriented or
more traditional office basedworking, I wouldn't say it's a
retrenchment necessarily, it'sjust more of a rebalance. As far
as return to work. Even thosethat are returned to offices, in
(27:50):
many, many cases, they're havingmore of a flexible work style.
Were making this up, but threedays in the office two days at
home. So that ability to workfrom anywhere, which is inherent
in our solution is still in highdemand. And that's I don't see
that going away anytime soon.
Dave Michels (28:07):
I will say that that Mitel teleworker solution
was one of the very first remotework solutions, and it was it's
rock solid. That was that was agreat solution. And that was
that was years ahead of theindustry, actually. All right,
David. Well, I think we're justabout out of time here. But I
can't thank you enough forjoining us on this conversation.
And I think your move withdetails is very exciting. I want
to know how this RingCentralpartnerships going to play out.
(28:29):
But you've got a great Option Aor Option B so
David Petts (28:32):
well. And I think that's well said, David, we've
got good options, and not justwe as mitre over, you know, our
partners and our customers aregoing to be the beneficiaries of
those great choices we've got tomake, we've got two very strong
brands, as we talked about,let's get the best that are
intended, of course will be Get,get the best of both companies
and continue to get the best outof our partnership with
(28:53):
RingCentral and offer ourcustomers the choice broadly
across the different solutiontypes that we've been talking
about. Exciting times ahead, I'dsay
Evan Kirstel (29:00):
indeed. Well, thanks so much. And look forward
to seeing you at EnterpriseConnect and beyond. Thanks,
David.
David Petts (29:05):
All right. Cheers, guys.
Evan Kirstel (29:07):
Bye bye. Well, David has been around the block,
he's seen a thing or two, it'sgreat to get an update from my
tell, you never quite knowwhat's going on from the outside
looking in. No, it
Dave Michels (29:17):
is interesting.
And I hope you didn't takeoffense with the OG stuff,
whatever. But he has been arounda while and I forgot about that
whole HP stuff. And that was,you know, an amazing part of our
history. So
Evan Kirstel (29:28):
yeah, and he had broken to HP which is printers
and boxes and HP Enterprise. Sothese companies evolve and
reinvent themselves all thetime. And that's clearly what
Mitel was trying to do isreinvent themselves continually.
So I'm good. I think
Dave Michels (29:43):
grabbing ATS is a brilliant move. I think it's
gonna give them a lot more scaleand we didn't really get into
the interview is unfortunate,but he has a fairly large
professional services division.
And I think David talked alittle bit about how a lot of
customers need professionalservices with their systems. And
I think we can see Mitel reallyexpand in that business
Evan Kirstel (30:00):
and you're right, they're huge in Germany
Deutschland and they have a veryloyal customer base I mean
Siemens and all these companiesthey don't change they don't
disappear they don't go away soprobably a good fit
Dave Michels (30:10):
well Evan has always enjoyed the conversation
thank you so much we'll be backsoon with a yet another episode
of talking heads. I folks youever made a conversation with a
man you gotta get out of here.
The phone don't bomb down yourphone. No, man. No, it's me.
Hey welcome to Talking here, Snake Evan and I
(00:14):
will be talking with David petsfrom Mitel. But before that,
Evan, I gotta say, you know, atthe recent cloud Communications
Alliance, you did a fantasticjob of telling people how to do
social. I learned so much fromyour session. I thought that was
great.
Evan Kirstel (00:28):
I've been telling you for years, but for some
reason, you finally decided tolisten. And I'll give you a rare
compliment. You had your firstlive stream at Dave Michaels on
LinkedIn. It was calledinfluence me. Yep. Which is
getting influencers on to changeyour mind.
Dave Michels (00:44):
I realized no one's talking to the
influencers. And so you'retalking to all these different
companies, other people talkingto companies and says, I know
some of the influencers. I'll dothat once.
Evan Kirstel (00:51):
I've tried to change your mind for a decade,
I've failed miserably. I stillhave an Android.
Dave Michels (00:58):
You have a microphone, you seem to have so
much more credibility when youexplain this to me. But it was
interesting, the kinds ofquestions you were getting. And
I think we should have a littlebrief recap here because it was
very interesting. What the helldo we do with Twitter? Is
Twitter dying? I mean, a lot ofpeople are abandoning it. The
system is not as stable. What'syour advice? I mean, you're
still active on Twitter. What doyou think?
Evan Kirstel (01:19):
I think we're at peak Twitter and I don't think
there's anywhere to go butslowly downhill. In fact, the
service itself seems degradedthe responsiveness, the
glitches, there strangeanomalies using the service.
There's things that have beendiscontinued, like the review
newsletter, I mean, had 20,000Review newsletter, which
(01:41):
luckily, I managed to take awaybut these gradual the third
party, which is off one day, andyeah, third party clients, it's
still chaotic. And and whileMusk has these grand schemes and
ambitions, why don't you get theproduct, get the service, right?
And then focus on all thesethese wider dreams. So I think
(02:02):
people are gonna get annoyedover time and gradually move on.
Look, I mean, things last a longtime, we still have Yahoo email
ids and aol.com as a thing andfax machine. So I think Twitter
will be around but whether it'sthe hotbed of engagement and and
media journalism that it oncewas, I really doubt it can
(02:25):
sustain
Dave Michels (02:26):
that that's got to be painful to say that
Evan Kirstel (02:28):
LinkedIn is going going well, and engagement is
high. And Microsoft is notruined it, thank goodness. And
your live stream, for example,had dozens and dozens of
comments.
Dave Michels (02:38):
But that was eye opening. Because of course, I
put your advice. I streamed intoboth Twitter and LinkedIn at the
same time, and LinkedIn did havemuch more engagement. And I've
noticed that on a number ofposts I've done and so you know,
thanks, Ilan, I didn't reallyknow about LinkedIn before. So
Evan Kirstel (02:53):
the next battleground is Reddit. So we're
gonna have to up our game. Geton Reddit. And you should check
out Cora Cora is an amazingcontent repository, people
asking q&a s and upvoting and,you know, no nonsense
Dave Michels (03:08):
information repository, amazing information
repositories. Let's get to ourinterview with David.
Evan Kirstel (03:13):
Yeah, he has a lot of info to share. Looking
forward to it.
god (03:16):
Talking it's it's a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration, your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or attalking points.com. That's
(03:38):
points with the Z and Evancurse. school.com. That's ki r s
t e l.
Dave Michels (03:45):
Welcome to toffee has today we have with us David
pets. Evan, you probably knewDavid back at shortfill. Is that
right?
Evan Kirstel (03:52):
Well, I do have David David has a long and
distinguished career short sellNokia, HP. So David, you're
pretty old, I think essentially.
Right.
David Petts (04:04):
Thanks. Thanks for that introduction. Yeah, I've
been around a bit. Let's put itthat way. But yeah, so as you
said shorter was the lead inconnection to my hotel. HP and,
and even before
Dave Michels (04:17):
you miss that connection, I mean, it's just so
easy. You work in a company, youget acquired and you end up at a
new company, but you didn't dothat.
David Petts (04:23):
That's true. That's a nature of acquisitions, I
guess, you know, in thatparticular circumstance, there
might our team were acquiringshorter and they elected to keep
the executive team intact. Somyself and actually myself and
all of my colleagues at shorterhave moved on to other things at
that point.
Dave Michels (04:39):
That motel which is during my time in your
career, motel was kind of thekind of like the Borg we ought
to talk to you about we want totalk we want to talk about my
tail we want to talk about thebig news with a toast that was
just announced. But first I wantto talk a little bit about short
tail. Now when you think aboutshort tail, I have a feeling and
I'm just guessing here, you kindof have a smile
David Petts (04:59):
in it. context have fond memories of a good time and
I was with the short sale forabout seven years. Obviously the
company was around longer thanthat. I enjoyed it short. I
think we had had a good companyand I think Mitel acquired a
great asset. I enjoyed my timethere so to that degree,
absolutely look back with it.
Dave Michels (05:18):
How many CEOs Did you work for at sore toe
David Petts (05:21):
to to Peter Blackmore, and then Don Joe's?
Dave Michels (05:25):
And I'm guessing one of them you liked?
David Petts (05:29):
I like the both Peter and I actually didn't know
each other from HP days. I knewPeter before I went
Dave Michels (05:37):
through that avenue said, yeah, he's PRN.
Yeah, I didn't connect that.
David Petts (05:42):
And even before that Compaq, which because HP
acquired compact. So Peter, I'veknown for a long time, about I
enjoyed working with both. Peterwas only about a year of my
time, but short also longer timewith Don as at the helm. And
certainly with Dawn, it was thetransformative period where we
were really driving the companyto focus much more on the UCaaS
(06:04):
transformation that wasoccurring. We were very, very
heavily US centric, as I'm sureyou know. It was a fun
transformation project with itwith a company that ultimately
ended up in the acquisition frommitre.
Evan Kirstel (06:16):
I love the Compaq reference, Dave still uses a 3d
six daily driver
David Petts (06:22):
at Tokyo smile. So I don't know whether you ever
saw these. But John Cleese andthe adverts for Compaq they were
one among the funniest adverts.
Evan Kirstel (06:31):
I do remember.
Please tell me you you got tomeet John Cleves as part of that
advertising campaign.
David Petts (06:37):
Oh, gosh, I wish I was not in acting. But that
would have been good.
Evan Kirstel (06:40):
So you grew revenue 250 million in four
years and software sales to 400million at two different
companies. So you reduce salesexpense as a percentage of
revenue, you have very creativego to market. So where does this
innovation and thinking comefrom? Tell us about your
trajectory over the last decadeor so?
David Petts (07:01):
Yeah, sure. Well, so the things you're referring
to there a couple a couple ofareas where I spent many years
at a combination of Compaq andHP and my role. This is more
than you ask. But originally, itwas very operational. I was in
the supply chain and operationsside, but I moved over to sales
fairly quickly. I've beenthrough I've had the benefit and
opportunity to go through a lotof guises of Compaq as they grew
(07:23):
from a PC company to a broadserver company to then acquiring
dec, adding services, then beingacquired by HP. So those
experiences all helped for me asto seeing opportunities, both in
companies coming together. Buteven in organic evolution of
companies. I've always enjoyedproblem solving and business
(07:45):
problems. In particular, thosegrowth things, you know, where
are you short, I was theexample. One of the charters
that I was tasked with duringthe company by the board was to
improve the efficiency of thesales team, you know, the
productivity, and you know,sales expenses, a percent of
revenue, and so forth. That wasa unique challenge that formed
(08:05):
both partner strategies, as wellas our own sales, Team design
and approach. So differentthings in different places. But
I enjoy a business solvingbusiness problems. That's what
leads to a lot of theseoutcomes. I guess,
Dave Michels (08:16):
I got a business problem here, I got a problem, I
want you to see if you can solvefor me, because, you know, HP
was obviously a box company yousold boxes. Hopefully it's fair
not to insult in short tail isclearly a Box Company, although
the transformation you weretalking about earlier undergone
was trying to become a cloudcompany, which is part of why
have Mitel acquired it. Michael,of course, has a legacy as a
(08:39):
cloud company. And then lastyear, you've already mentioned
this RingCentral thing became,you know, remains a cloud
company. So my problem, thequestion for you to solve is how
do you get to be the Cloud toCloud Guy with all this box
background?
David Petts (08:53):
Well, I haven't already mentioned so I'll
correct you a one thing HP is abox company is somewhat of a
mischaracterization. Forexample, I ran the software
business in the Americas at HPand globally. That was a very
significant business. So I'vegot a lot of experience in
software both from that as wellas UCaaS with with short vowel
and SAS more generally, we arebetween the two. In terms of my
(09:17):
history shorter waspredominantly around that how do
we transform from a UC pure as apure with a more on premise
orientation to a UCaaS piece. Soa lot of our learnings from that
are very applicable to whatwe're doing now. The ring
partnership RingCentralpartnership we have, then the
role that I've been doing forthe last 14 months or so
(09:39):
specifically, is about how do wetransition our current UCaaS
customers our UC as a servicecustomers from several different
platforms that we have at Mitelover to the RingCentral
solution. And so, frankly, youknow, that's not got a lot to do
with why UCaaS it's got a lot todo with why migrate get from one
(10:00):
place to another and how do wemake that an attractive
proposition to customers? But alot shorter answers your
question, I've got a lot ofsoftware experience from running
the software sales team, theUCaaS transformation in short
out over many years. And that'spart of what led me to where I
am interesting.
Dave Michels (10:16):
I appreciate you correcting me because when I say
Box Company, it was meant to bea little bit of antagonistic.
But the problem is, we don'tknow what to call this stuff
anymore, right? Because you justsaid, you know, it's software.
So when Mitel said that, whenthey announced the agreement
with RingCentral, which ofcourse, you're in the right in
the middle of the conclusion alot from a lot of people was
that Mitel was going to be apremises based company only, and
(10:37):
they're gonna die. And neitherone of those statements are true
or correct. And and so what howdo you describe Mitel? Is a
premises is a private cloud,what do you say about Mitel? And
then, of course, you're in themiddle of that RingCentral part.
And so you're kind of what isthe cloud to cloud part of your
title?
David Petts (10:55):
Sure. Yeah. No, great question. And actually, to
your point, even my tiles,solutions or any solution, and
you see, there's a hugecomponent with software, that a
lot of that there's a physicalbox that is enabling the
solution to work, but thesoftware is a key. But
nevertheless, you know, toanswer your question, the way in
(11:15):
which companies customers accessall of their great view
deliverables of a unifiedcommunication solution has
evolved over time.
Traditionally, you would argueit was pure on premise where
customers bought the solution,put it into their premise and
operated and managed it right.
But then, you know, over time,there was virtualization, how
(11:35):
did you then abstract some ofthe software from the physical
appliances and separate the two?
That in turn, wouldn't sayspecifically evolved? But there
was also then how do I deliverthat from an external
infrastructure rather than myown datacenter, if you want to
call it that, whether that's aset of appliances in a cupboard,
or a true sort of data centerfor a company? So there's
(11:55):
depends how you want to callthat is that cloud is that
hosted solution? Is it just anoutsourced data center
management. So the ability ofabstracting the software and
changing the solution over timeas an enable different ways of
consuming the solution all theway through, including UCaaS,
you know, as a service, and ofcourse, you see as a service is
(12:17):
multi tenant in nature, allcustomers have essentially the
same solution. And it's evolvedat the pace, the vendor decides
to evolve it, you would arguethat a dedicated cloud solution
or single instance, thatcontrols are much more with the
customer in terms of things likemaintenance, Windows and
upgrades and changes. So there'sa potpourri of different ways
(12:39):
you can consume the solution.
And we through the partnership.
And of course, through all ofthe offerings we have,
generically, we want to enableall of the different solution
types for our customers tochoose from in your customer
lifecycle management kind ofplay.
Evan Kirstel (12:57):
Absolutely. And so how is the partnership with
RingCentral? Going? Can youcharacterize the status on that
go to market?
David Petts (13:03):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's two different componentsto this, which aren't
necessarily obvious. Or maybethey are, there's a cloud to
cloud piece which I mentioned,you know, that's been my primary
focus until for the last 1214months or so. And then there's
the premise to cloud and thatdistinction between those two is
really customers making theirdecision to move from an on
(13:25):
premise environment to UCaaS forthe first time, versus those
that are have already made thatdecision. But because of the
partnership and making adecision to move from our
solution to the MVP solutionwith RingCentral, our partner, I
would say the short answerquestion is it's going well,
that's the firstcharacterization. I would also
be the first to admit that, youknow, in any new partnership,
(13:45):
we've learned a lot in the last,you know, 1214 months, how to
work together, how to work withour partners, how to improve,
you know, efficiency of processand proposition, what it is
customers are looking for, andhow to join the pitch, who's
doing what, where, to whom, andhow you know, so there's been a
lot and a lot of learnings frommy perspective, you know, very
(14:07):
successful first 1214
Dave Michels (14:12):
RingCentral partnership with Mitel is
unique. There's nothing likethat. I think you're the fourth
one with Avaya being the firstone, but the other ones were all
modeled kind of on the Avayamodel where they Avaya basically
became master agent. That's aword I learned from short tail
actually got its channel and itsdirect teams to sell RingCentral
(14:34):
or by a cloud officer should bemore accurate. In the Mitel.
case, it's different, right? Inthe Mitel case, it's not Mitel
cloud office, it's RingCentral.
And this was the first timeRingCentral have done this where
the RingCentral is kind ofRingCentral team is more or less
responsible for the sale. I'mguessing your role when you talk
about how you've learned themistakes and whatever in the
early part of this transfer. I'massuming I'm guessing your role
(14:55):
wasn't there in the beginning.
I'm guessing that if therewithout you needing some sort of
Ambassador to help thesecustomers move over to
RingCentral. Is that accurate?
David Petts (15:04):
Yes, on both fronts. And in as you mentioned,
that uniqueness of the MitelRingCentral partnership, it is a
moving of the customers to thecore RingCentral MVP solution,
managed and sold by RingCentral.
In the case of the otherpartnerships you mentioned, I
think of it almost as awholesale or white label
solution, and you know, theselling and so forth is done by
(15:27):
Avaya, and so forth. Just forclarity, we've actually, again,
we've just made some changes inthis, but I'm gonna give a
little bit of context andhistory. So over the last 12 to
14 months, we've sort of had adivergent path in the context of
the premise to Cloud has beenworking the mitosis role has
(15:49):
been principally working withour partners, and through our
partners to the customers, wherethose customers are seeking a
UCaaS solution as as theirjourney and evolution of their
own decision making and solutionset, how to guide them over to
RingCentral as our as ourpartner, and how to position
(16:09):
that as the our recommended andsupported choice, then
RingCentral does the naturalselling of that to the customer
just as they would any othercustomer. In the cloud or cloud
side, it's actually been alittle bit different. We worked
with RingCentral, to enable ateam that I've managed to sell
the migration. So we've beendoing the selling the
(16:31):
positioning of MVP, but becauseof our we have customer success
managers and so forth, we have avery intimate relationship, we
have a direct contract that in aUCaaS world, that contract is
directly with the end customer.
And obviously the partners areagents and master agents, as you
described earlier, we had a muchstronger involvement in defining
(16:54):
the propositions understandingfrom customers firsthand what
their challenges were inconsidering this, and a lot of
it, I would say is less aboutselecting MVP as a viable
solution. I mean, at the end ofthe day, they're highly regarded
well recommended by companieslike the people like yourselves
as as a leading solution. It wasmore about I've got to go
(17:17):
through a change and who's goingto manage that change? How do I
move from platform a Platform B,what does that mean for my
employees, my administrationteam? How do I get from A to B?
And how do I get there? And theleast painful way?
Dave Michels (17:29):
Is this transition you're describing as a possible?
Yes,
David Petts (17:33):
yeah, we've we've successfully done it with many,
many customers already in thefirst year. Plus, we've put in,
I'll give you an example, weworked with both ourselves. And
with RingCentral. This is justone example to create what we
call migration assistancepackage or program. And that
map, you're one example that iswe're able to export the
(17:54):
customer's currentconfiguration, call routing,
call flows, your userslocations, etc, etc, from our
cloud solution, and in a formatthat's importable by
RingCentral, into theirconfiguration system. So we
lower the overhead of anycustomer having to do all that
work. So that's just one exampleof how we can lower their we
(18:16):
can't make it zero. But we cantake away a lot of the pain that
you would associate with movingfrom one platform a to Platform
B. And by the way, we can applythat not just to cloud to cloud
migrations from Mitel toRingCentral. But in a broader
customer lifecycle managementworld, we can apply that we've
got customers that might want tomove to our one of our
(18:36):
subscription offerings, how dothey move from an existing
premise platform to asubscription package? Their
learnings have been veryhelpful, but hopefully they've
that that clarifies what I mean,in some of the learnings we've
had.
Dave Michels (18:49):
I want to back up a little bit to the premises
concept of what my till isperceived, as explained a little
more what that means. I mean, asmy team is still making
hardware, so making physicalappliances, or is it strictly
software? Are most of theseimplementations literally on
prem? Are they in a private datacenter or private cloud? Or are
they in AWS? Tell me about thecore? My tell Prem solution, and
(19:13):
what do you call it?
David Petts (19:14):
Yeah, I think Well, I think the short answer your
question is all of the above.
You know, as I was saying alittle earlier, there are
multiple different ways you canconsume a solution from my
hotel. And yes, there's anelement of even down to the
physical device, you know,handsets are still a thing. Some
more customers, or somecustomers are going to soft
phone environments, but physicalphones are clearly on premise,
(19:37):
if you want to call it that.
Yes, there are abilities forcompanies to still buy on
premise traditional, if you wantto call it that on premise
solutions, where they havewhatever hardware is required,
and of course, the software intheir own servers and
infrastructure on their premise.
But there are also abstractedthe software can be housed in an
(19:57):
ad AWS or similar kind ofenvironment, either managed by
the customer or managed by athird party. And so that could
be a hosted solution managed bya, through a managed service for
the customer do it themselves.
But instead of it being on theirpremise, it's in a shared
infrastructure or you know, anAWS kind of environment. All of
(20:19):
those options are available, asI said, with Ring, ring is our
now partner for a multi tenantUCaaS environment.
Dave Michels (20:26):
I'm still trying to figure out though, is, is
Mitel still making physicalboxes or appliances? Or is it
only software these days?
David Petts (20:34):
Yeah, that there are some appliances, but
predominantly, it's software, abit of both, I would say more,
the hardware is more of anenabler where where needed and
or where that option ispreferred. Excellent.
Evan Kirstel (20:48):
So Dave, you haven't talked about the big
eight US announcement yet? Isthat still under wraps? Or can
we dive into that big news?
David Petts (20:57):
What is big news, that's for sure, there's an
element of under wraps in thecontext of with any transaction
of this size, there is a periodof time between the announcement
which we made yesterday throughto the actual close of the
transaction, there are someregulatory and other procedural
pieces that need to go through.
But for sure, it's not a secretat this point. You know, and I
(21:17):
think it's a tremendousopportunity for Mitel. And the
two companies coming together,very complimentary, you know, we
have, you know, I would positionMitel, as historically or
traditionally, SMB through tosort of mid market, perhaps
touching into the enterprisespace, one would argue that
unify is more of that mid marketand all the way through to large
(21:38):
enterprise. So there's a verycomplimentary expansion of our
technologies and through it,your addressable market, from a
customer size standpoint,geographically, there's a great
fit, unify have a very stronggeographic presence in Western
Europe, South America, manyparts, somewhere, they have a
much stronger footprint thanthan my dad has. Conversely, we
(22:01):
have a stronger US footprintthan unified. So geographically,
it's very complimentary as well.
If you think about some of thethings that this brings to the
party, which as you'd imagine,aligns to that sort of
enterprise Centricity that unifyhas managed service, we have a
relatively small managed serviceor professional services
(22:23):
structure, unify has a verylarge managed service. So lots
of very complimentary things,both geographically addressable
market and skills andcapabilities, there, and then
you've got the channel. Andthere are different channel
types associated with thosedifferent businesses. So a
complementary coming together ofchannels to so I'm very excited
about it. Coincidentally, Iguess we've sort of touched on
(22:44):
this earlier, but both companiesalready have a partnership with
RingCentral, slightly differentnatures. But again, the strategy
that each company has chosen isvery aligned. I'm very excited
about what this opportunitybrings together.
Evan Kirstel (22:57):
Let's talk about the mobile collaboration suite,
you know, obviously, voicemessaging video, where are we
with your portfolio? What areyou seeing getting most
traction? What applications andservices are getting most of
usage and engagement byemployees like what's hot these
days, and Mito
David Petts (23:13):
video and messaging, it's not that new,
but it still feels new in termsof the adoption rate and use
case. But yeah, certainly, videocollaboration, desktop sharing,
and collaboration is a stillhot, we're still seeing and take
up of my team meetings and theMiCollab. And all of the
elements that enable that, aboveand beyond, you know, the
(23:35):
classic voice call controlaspects of a UC solution. So I'd
argue that's still there,integration of those
applications. Again, not hugelymy domain of expertise, but our
cloud link, and enablingsimplified integration of
applications. With that you'reabstracting that from a physical
deployment is exciting. We'reseeing more, I didn't without
(24:00):
describe this as desires, if youlike, from customers around
understanding sort of analyticsand information about how their
solutions are being used, andhow to optimize the use of I
think there's some opportunitiesin that direction as well.
Evan Kirstel (24:14):
Let's talk branding. You know, my tell is
very story brand, pretty wellknown, particularly
internationally, in so manyindustries, very happy with a
motel brand that's going to bearound, I imagine
Dave Michels (24:25):
is going to be around as the question. Ah, good
one.
David Petts (24:29):
Well, so what I can say at this point, I don't know
about the overall branding, butcertainly as the company's
coming together will be that theheadquarters will be out of arc
and otter HQ for Mitel inCanada, and I think we've
already shared that our CEO willbe the CEO of the combined
companies, but in terms of thebranding down to individual
(24:50):
platforms and solutions, work tobe done on that and that'll be
part of what happens when we gothrough the integration.
Dave Michels (24:56):
That's a tough one I have to say because I said HLS
earlier, but actually If theunify brand, and at first they
tell us was going to get rid ofthe unify brand, they worked
really hard when the acquisitionfirst happened to get rid of it.
And then they realized maybethey want to sell this division.
So they brought it back andbrought the brand back. But it's
a great brand. I really likedthe unified brand.
Evan Kirstel (25:14):
And it was a great product. As you may remember, we
were on a jaunt to Bermuda for abriefing where we talked to all
of the eight people at the timethat the unify people. And this
is a few years ago, and I was soimpressed with the application,
it was way ahead of its timeeven then. So really interesting
to see that out there in thewider world.
David Petts (25:36):
I mean, one of the things I've This is a funny for
you, I guess. But when Mitelacquired short arm, we were
wrestling with branding, wesuggested that why don't we just
take a bit of our name and a bitof your name, we could use sure
from us and tell from you and wecould just get caught it showed.
Clearly, clearly it went downthe other way. And they said,
well, let's use let's take thatstrategy. But when you use my
(25:56):
from us and tell from Yeah.
We'll see how it goes on thisone.
Dave Michels (26:01):
Yeah, no. Mitel has been around for a long time.
It's a good brand. And ofcourse, they did the relaunch of
the brand with the new logo, andI must have been 2018 2020
around there. And then theunified brand had a big launch
probably just a few years beforethat around there like that. Two
great brands, I think theunified brand is better known in
Europe. Yeah, that's gonna be atough question. If you if you
(26:22):
keep them both, or get rid ofone. I'm also curious what
you're going to do with thehandsets. I think I have a
feeling I know how that's gonnaplay out. I think the motels.
Evan Kirstel (26:30):
You know, I think we should talk about talking
heads talking points brandingday, it's very confusing. Is it
talking heads? Is it talkingpoints? Is it buffalo
communications, you know, youneed to get your branding? Yes,
I
Dave Michels (26:41):
have too many brands. If you don't have
enough, Evan, that's anotherepisode.
Evan Kirstel (26:45):
Well, let's get back to the show. So let's talk
about the wider landscape for amoment before we kind of
conclude, obviously, Mitel saw ahuge uptick during the pandemic
and remote work andtelecommuting and remote agents.
What are you seeing now? Isthere some degree of
retrenchment is it isn't movinginto hybrid? What are your
customers and partners tellingyou it might tell?
David Petts (27:06):
Ya, I would say as you said, Evan, there's clearly
the pandemic drove verydefinitive behavior, as that
has, I wouldn't say completelypast that. We've seen many, many
companies, not necessarilyreturning to office space
working and retaining the remotenot because of the pandemic, but
because they found it beneficialto both their employees and them
(27:27):
as a business effect. My tell isvery much in that model here. So
there's still a demand for thatdistributed and remote working.
But there's equally your ongoingdemand for Office oriented or
more traditional office basedworking, I wouldn't say it's a
retrenchment necessarily, it'sjust more of a rebalance. As far
as return to work. Even thosethat are returned to offices, in
(27:50):
many, many cases, they're havingmore of a flexible work style.
Were making this up, but threedays in the office two days at
home. So that ability to workfrom anywhere, which is inherent
in our solution is still in highdemand. And that's I don't see
that going away anytime soon.
Dave Michels (28:07):
I will say that that Mitel teleworker solution
was one of the very first remotework solutions, and it was it's
rock solid. That was that was agreat solution. And that was
that was years ahead of theindustry, actually. All right,
David. Well, I think we're justabout out of time here. But I
can't thank you enough forjoining us on this conversation.
And I think your move withdetails is very exciting. I want
to know how this RingCentralpartnerships going to play out.
(28:29):
But you've got a great Option Aor Option B so
David Petts (28:32):
well. And I think that's well said, David, we've
got good options, and not justwe as mitre over, you know, our
partners and our customers aregoing to be the beneficiaries of
those great choices we've got tomake, we've got two very strong
brands, as we talked about,let's get the best that are
intended, of course will be Get,get the best of both companies
and continue to get the best outof our partnership with
(28:53):
RingCentral and offer ourcustomers the choice broadly
across the different solutiontypes that we've been talking
about. Exciting times ahead, I'dsay
Evan Kirstel (29:00):
indeed. Well, thanks so much. And look forward
to seeing you at EnterpriseConnect and beyond. Thanks,
David.
David Petts (29:05):
All right. Cheers, guys.
Evan Kirstel (29:07):
Bye bye. Well, David has been around the block,
he's seen a thing or two, it'sgreat to get an update from my
tell, you never quite knowwhat's going on from the outside
looking in. No, it
Dave Michels (29:17):
is interesting.
And I hope you didn't takeoffense with the OG stuff,
whatever. But he has been arounda while and I forgot about that
whole HP stuff. And that was,you know, an amazing part of our
history. So
Evan Kirstel (29:28):
yeah, and he had broken to HP which is printers
and boxes and HP Enterprise. Sothese companies evolve and
reinvent themselves all thetime. And that's clearly what
Mitel was trying to do isreinvent themselves continually.
So I'm good. I think
Dave Michels (29:43):
grabbing ATS is a brilliant move. I think it's
gonna give them a lot more scaleand we didn't really get into
the interview is unfortunate,but he has a fairly large
professional services division.
And I think David talked alittle bit about how a lot of
customers need professionalservices with their systems. And
I think we can see Mitel reallyexpand in that business
Evan Kirstel (30:00):
and you're right, they're huge in Germany
Deutschland and they have a veryloyal customer base I mean
Siemens and all these companiesthey don't change they don't
disappear they don't go away soprobably a good fit
Dave Michels (30:10):
well Evan has always enjoyed the conversation
thank you so much we'll be backsoon with a yet another episode
of talking heads. I folks youever made a conversation with a
man you gotta get out of here.
The phone don't bomb down yourphone. No, man. No, it's me.
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