Mitel buying ShoreTel

[Keithtmurphy]

What's everyone's take on this??

[SiddFinch]

It makes sense from a business standpoint. For us, though, I think it's a wait-and-see to find out how Mitel sees this playing out.

[GuessWho]

At least I can go back to using Oaisys/Mitel Call Recorder now!

I think this is a good thing, I've been not impressed with the direction ShoreTel was going the last 3 or so years (especially support, it has gotten terrible in the last 2 years in particular), hopefully under Mitel things will get back on track.

[mikeyb123]

True... although I can't see Mitel maintaining the 2 on prem solutions. Keep the cloud stuff but as for on prem I think the days are numbered - bit like the CS1000 and avaya. they committed to x years of development and now are dropping the product set (still supported but no longer sold or improved)
it'll be a while before we see the new roadmap....

[mrp]

Oh boy... 8 years ago we ripped out our old Mitel system and replaced it with ShoreTel... what's old is new again I suppose....

[mradtke]

I saw this coming. I work closely with a lot of shoretel employees. employees that have been with the company for years. they have all since been pushed out and are working somewhere else. Everyone one of them. I don't see mitel keeping the premise product as they already have a very competitive product. They just want the US cloud infrastructure. just my 2 cents

[occdave]

We are still trying to figure out how this is effecting our Toshiba customer. Oaisys, Toshiba, and now Shoretel. All of our telecom systems are becoming Mitel. Resistance is futile

[B08bydigital]

At least I can go back to using Oaisys/Mitel Call Recorder now!

I think this is a good thing, I've been not impressed with the direction ShoreTel was going the last 3 or so years (especially support, it has gotten terrible in the last 2 years in particular), hopefully under Mitel things will get back on track.

Amen to that man! We actually just ended our partnership with Shoretel because of how things have been going in the past couple of years. But we are a Mitel partner, so maybe I'll get to keep my job afterall!

[shore99]

At least I can go back to using Oaisys/Mitel Call Recorder now!

I think this is a good thing, I've been not impressed with the direction ShoreTel was going the last 3 or so years (especially support, it has gotten terrible in the last 2 years in particular), hopefully under Mitel things will get back on track.

I agree that Shoretel's TAC has been overall, just bad that last 3 years. Their prem architecture was great 9-12 years ago when LAN and WANs sucked, you needed that redundancy. But now most WANs are Ethernet and most LANs are GB. To many moving pieces and parts and troubleshooting is a nightmare, what controls what and what controls the phone and what server this and that, just a headache. They should have stuck to their original roadmap of 4-5 years ago, which was to put the HQ server on Linux, along with virtualization. I don't know how good the cloud company they purchased some years back was, running M5 I think. But they should have just kept cloud and prem separate and do a hybrid with SIP trunks for customers that needed it. They wanted to be a large player instead of a small company that produced a great product, with the exception of the SMR, that is the worst mobility solution I have ever seen. Over the last few years they hired to many people trying to do to many things. It sucks, because I promise you the prem solution is gone, it will be supported for the next 5-7 years but no sales or R&D. As far as Mitel, well if you work with them you know that their TAC and sales and product is far from perfect. I work with their newer MiVoice 3300. The cloud is the same as the prem its just a VM in their Miami data center. It will be interesting, but people like us work on something and really get to know it for several years and then boom it is going away slowly but surely...

[SouthWest]

I for one, welcome our new Mitel overlords!

Mitel.png

[mattdarnell]

......They should have stuck to their original roadmap of 4-5 years ago, which was to put the HQ server on Linux, along with virtualization....

I remember going to a partner conference a while ago and they were talking about putting the HQ server inside of a Shoregear. The V-switch was the first step of that but they never wanted/were able to port HQ to Linux.

The infatuation with Platform as a Service was a path to where we are today. Same thing as Nortel trying to bend their existing products into VoIP instead of starting over.

Good news is that there is a lot of spare hardware around, 14.2 is stable and Connect has made huge strides the last few releases. We have a few customers on it but have yet to upgrade any 14.2 folks to Connect.

[Ursan]

My company migrated from Shoretel to Micollab about a year ago and it's been one challenge after another. It's robust, but way more finicky. Also, their tech support leaves a LOT to be desired.

Is there a Mitel forum out there similar to this one? For as long as I've been here the help as been great.