Sprint, Mitel Team Up On Cloud Services

Sprint channel partners will now be able to resell Mitel's cloud-based voice and UC solutions, particularly within the SMB space, where Mitel and Sprint said demand for low-cost and hosted voice, UC and collaboration solutions is especially soaring.

"Organizations worldwide are turning to cloud services that support their business requirements in a timely and cost-efficient manner," said Matt Carter, president of Sprint Emerging Solutions and Global Wholesale, in a statement. "This agreement with Mitel augments our Wholesale Cloud Services offer with the industry's leading unified communications solution ... [and] ensures we continue to enable our resellers with easy-to-use, affordable and high-performance cloud solutions that they can quickly take to market without the expense and hassle of having to create their own services."

[Related: Former ShoreTel Channel Head Lands At Mitel ]

The deal also gives Mitel and its channel the ability to start offering some of the non-Mitel Software-as-a-Service solutions found in Sprint's Cloud Wholesale portfolio, explained Jon Brinton, president of NetSolutions, Mitel's CLEC arm.

Mitel has had this sort of partnership in place with Sprint for some time, Brinton said, but this new agreement will extend that partnership and help Mitel and its partners round out their cloud offerings with applications outside the UC space.

"We offer Sprint services today through our Mitel [NetSolutions] division, and now we are adding some more components that are within the Sprint Wholesale Cloud portfolio that we can offer through our channel or to our end users," Brinton said. "So when you have clients that want some additional application -- whether it's storage, security or other cloud-based software components that are outside of [Mitel's] normal market space -- it gives us an easy way to have that application attachment for those clients."

Sprint's Wholesale and Emerging Solutions business unit introduced the cloud services portfolio in April. The suite includes a range of cloud-based services, including those for Web hosting, Web security and online backup.

The agreement between Mitel and Sprint represents the latest in a series of partnerships between UC vendors and service providers aimed at taking their solutions to the cloud. Cisco, for instance, has signed on 40 partners -- including, most recently, distributor Ingram Micro -- to offer its Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS) platform, while Avaya this week said that Verizon would start carrying its new UC- and video-as-a-service solutions.

PUBLISHED MARCH 20, 2013