Canadian comms vendor Mitel Networks has given the industry a brief snapshot of its future strategy, hinting that it may look towards a new class of reseller and revealing troubling facts about its financial health as it heads towards an imminent $230m (£146.2m) IPO.
On 4 February Mitel filed its Form F-1/A with the SEC in Washington and said its continuing success would be "highly dependent upon establishing and maintaining successful relationships with a variety of channel partners".
Expanding this partner network is on the cards for the near future, added Mitel.
"The majority of our channel partners sell our solutions to the SME market. In the future, we hope to further penetrate the large enterprise market. However, our existing channel partners may not be effective in selling to large enterprises," it said in the filing.
On 4 February Mitel filed its Form F-1/A with the SEC in Washington and said its continuing success would be "highly dependent upon establishing and maintaining successful relationships with a variety of channel partners".
Expanding this partner network is on the cards for the near future, added Mitel.
"The majority of our channel partners sell our solutions to the SME market. In the future, we hope to further penetrate the large enterprise market. However, our existing channel partners may not be effective in selling to large enterprises," it said in the filing.
Mitel has
plans to further invest in its distribution channel to capitalise on
trends towards software-based communications, and also has its eye on
"channel disruption resulting from industry consolidation".
It referred explicitly to Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of 3Com, Avaya's acquisition of Nortel and Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg as areas where it hoped to make up some ground.
Behind the scenes, Mitel has also been watching "companies that currently compete in other sectors of the information technology, communications or software industries, such as Microsoft and Google."
Towards the end of 2009 Mitel became the subject of allegations that it was planning to reverse its channel strategy and go direct, which its EMEA management branded as "preposterous".
However there may be concern over the company's continuing inability to pull in a profit. After taking a beating during the initial phases of the recession it lost close to $200m during its fiscal 2009, which closed on 30 April last year, as previously revealed by MicroScope.
But things did not improve a great deal in the first half of fiscal 2010, as total revenues fell 19.3% year-on-year to $321.8m.
Mitel also booked a net loss of $18m during the six-month period, down from a net profit of $73m in the first half of the previous year.
Apart from its financial 2008, when it made a net profit after buying Inter-Tel, Mitel added that it had booked net losses in 2007, 2006 and 2005 and each other year since its incorporation in 2001.
It referred explicitly to Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of 3Com, Avaya's acquisition of Nortel and Cisco's acquisition of Tandberg as areas where it hoped to make up some ground.
Behind the scenes, Mitel has also been watching "companies that currently compete in other sectors of the information technology, communications or software industries, such as Microsoft and Google."
Towards the end of 2009 Mitel became the subject of allegations that it was planning to reverse its channel strategy and go direct, which its EMEA management branded as "preposterous".
However there may be concern over the company's continuing inability to pull in a profit. After taking a beating during the initial phases of the recession it lost close to $200m during its fiscal 2009, which closed on 30 April last year, as previously revealed by MicroScope.
But things did not improve a great deal in the first half of fiscal 2010, as total revenues fell 19.3% year-on-year to $321.8m.
Mitel also booked a net loss of $18m during the six-month period, down from a net profit of $73m in the first half of the previous year.
Apart from its financial 2008, when it made a net profit after buying Inter-Tel, Mitel added that it had booked net losses in 2007, 2006 and 2005 and each other year since its incorporation in 2001.
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