The enterprise comms sector is resetting.
Mitel Appointed Mike Robinson as its CEO. He replaces Tarun Loomba. I have always thought comms vendors should issue trading cards for their leadership teams. If they did, I would have the Mitel set dating back to Don Smith, CEO circa 2000. Don’s COO was Paul Butcher, one of the most colorful comms executives that I recall. I remember when the SWAG was a paint can of “Mitel Whoop Ass.” Founder Terry Mathews was still involved back then - he had returned after a long absence for the VoIP revolution.
I also have fond memories of the Rich McBee era at Mitel. McBee was happiest when he was acquiring companies. When Searchlight Capital Partners acquired Mitel, they brought in Mary McDowell (previously CEO of Polycom). Mary dragged Tarun from Polycom to be Mitel’s Chief Product Officer.
That arrangement only lasted about a year because Searchlight got a brilliant idea (that only a PE Mother could love): To sell Mitel’s UCaaS future to RingCentral. This was a bad idea from the start. Mary knew it and quite literally left it to Tarun. Tarun became the CEO about six years ago.
We don’t know much about Mike Robinson. The press release says he has three decades of experience in telecom infrastructure and enterprise services. It also says he has some M&A experience. There’s an unconfirmed, poetic rumor that Robinson worked with Terry Matthews in the past.
Mitel recently completed its capital restructuring. As a result, the company got new owners (no one will miss Searchlight) and a new board. Also, Mitel merged with Unify last year, bringing larger customers, stronger verticals, and a bigger European footprint. I should also mention Mitel forged a clever hybrid partnership with Zoom.
That is a lot of changes, so a new CEO seems logical, reasonable, and inevitable. Loomba lasted slightly longer than the RingCentral partnership and about as long as Searchlight (though staggered).
The leadership change at Mitel is part of a greater pattern of an enterprise comms reset. CEO and presidential changes within UC and CC over the past 18 months include NiCE, Vonage, Five9, Sprinklr, Avaya, Twilio, RingCentral, UJET, and Mitel. Cisco Webex leadership has seen significant changes, too.
What’s causing all this? Probably the unprecedented amount of disruption and change:
UCaaS is commoditizing: This sounds worse than it is. It means customers are more likely to gravitate toward non-product factors such as price, bundles, and convenience.
AI disruption: We know AI is important; we don’t know who should be doing the R&D or how to charge for it.
Adjacencies: We saw telephony, messaging, and meetings converge: what’s next?
Easy growth is over. Every vendor thinks a new exec can fix it.
Teams’ dominance: We haven’t seen such dominance in enterprise comms since the Bell System.
It’s interesting times in comms. We are on the cusp of a new era. What it looks like isn’t clear. Nor do we know which company will be next to announce its new CEO.
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