When the head coach of the NFL’s Chicago Bears couldn’t figure out how to get the team’s playbook onto his iPad, the team turned to Mitel Networks Inc. in Ottawa for help.
The success with which one of Canada’s best known high-tech names responded to that request is an example of how Mitel hopes its latest networking products will becomes the standard for solving a wide range of interconnection problems.
Mitel has been awarded a $4-million contract with the federal government to set up a new IP phone network.
In fact Mitel’s future may depend on its ability to persuade the Canadian government and US customers that what it did for the Bears it can do for them too
After an unsuccessful bid in 2009 with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), Mitel has been awarded a $4-million contract with the federal government to set up a new IP phone network.
The announcement came less than a week after Mitel announced a contract with Measurement Inc., an American educational testing company, to equip its new campus in Durham, North Carolina with Mitel’s “voice virtualization” products.
“Under our new CEO, Richard McBee, we have created a focused strategy to specifically target businesses with 100-2500 users,” says Stephen Beamish, vice president of marketing and strategic partnerships at Mitel.
“By focusing on businesses of that specific size, we are sure we are going to be the best providing communications solutions specific for them.”
FOCUSING ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Beamish says Mitel will bid on federal government contracts to consolidate information technology services under the Shared Service Canada initiative.
Shared Services Canada plans to streamline the 100 different email systems, over 300 data centres, and 3,000 network services within the federal government. Under the new approach, the government would move to one email system, reduce the overall number of data centres to less than 20, and streamline networks within and between government departments.
“With our system we give our users an in office experience where ever they are.”
“Our Unified Communications (UC) solutions recognize the shift from bricks and mortar to the mobile office place. I could be in Singapore and with our system I would just dial a colleague’s extension from my blackberry to speak with them,” says Beamish.
“There would be no need to worry about roaming fees or using your personal device. With our system we give our users an in office experience where ever they are.”
These new contracts are good news for a company that posted a $2.8 million year-over-year loss in its first quarter of 2012 and has laid off 168 employees worldwide since its disappointing initial public offering in 2010.
Beamish was unable to comment specifically on Mitel’s financial outlook because the company is in a “quiet period” leading up to the release of its Q2 financial results in early December.
CAPITAL SQUEEZE
Historically, Ottawa tech companies like Mitel have struggled to compete against the telecommunications industry’s biggest firms because of their lack of size and capital.
“We are plagued by a small and conservative venture capital culture in Canada. It works against companies that need to take the appropriate time be able to compete in the technology industry in Canada.”
Mitel was taken private by a UK firm in the 1980s and only recently in 2010, with the capital of Mitel founder Terry Matthews, did Mitel return as a publicly traded company.
“The venture capital market in Canada is the worst it has even been and that predates the economic collapse in 2007,” says Lynda Leonard, vice president of the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC).
“We are plagued by a small and conservative venture capital culture in Canada. It works against companies that need to take the appropriate time be able to compete in the technology industry in Canada.”
Leonard says overall investors see Canada as stable place and understand the possibility that Canadian companies are undervalued, “but our conservative investing culture in Canada does not foster enterprise and innovation.”
Leonard says the loss of Nortel is a big blow that has hurt Ottawa’s high tech community “It shaped the technology cluster in Ottawa, and its absence has deflated the community as a whole.”
FOSTERING HIGH-TECH GROWTH
Leonard says there are only three or four technology companies in Canada that can create a culture, similar to Nortel, and create a “critical mass” that fosters growth and can help support small to mid sized companies, like Mitel.
Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM) in Waterloo, Ont. is of course one of those companies.
“At Mitel we recognizes the importance of mobile partnerships and work with RIM to ensure our products work together,” says Beamish pointing to the Mitel app for Blackberry as an example. “Also, more and more customers are wanting to integrate tablets into their business environment and we have made sure that they will fit into a Mitel Network system as well.”
Beamish says the Mitel system can help “free people from a walled garden” because their system is agnostic, meaning it can work with both RIM and Apple devices.”
Through tearing down those walls, Mitel hopes to stay competitive in a rapidly changing industry. And if they can learn anything for their NFL client, they are going to be at the top of their game to compete in the telecommunications sector.