The two companies have had a joint go-to-market strategy for the last four years, said Mitel COO Paul Butcher. The convergence is currently at the channel level, but now we’re doing joint R&D, with the first deliverables by the end of this year, he said.
Ottawa, Ontario-based Mitel has been moving increasingly to an IP-based telephony offering in recent years, with 80% of its sales in the last quarter being VoIP kit. The access routers which Palo Alto, California-based HP launched earlier this year are seen as an ideal platform for converged voice and data for the branch/remote office marketplace. Butcher said work is also under way for single-console management of Mitel’s IP phones and HP’s networking equipment.
On the IP phone front, Butcher said Mitel’s strategy is to compete with Cisco by taking a different tack on product development. Cisco does a phone with a four-color screen for $1,395, whereas the Navigator phone we just launched costs $400 and integrates with a 19-inch full-color flat screen that costs $200, he said.
