What happened to the Mitel/Polycom deal?

TORONTO – There is a point of no return on most transactions but in the case of Mitel and Polycom that point in the road took a dramatic 180 degree turn.

Polycom board of directors terminated the merger agreement with Mitel Networks upon the receipt a requisite walkaway money said to be $60 million. Then Polycom entered into a new merger agreement with Triangle Private Holdings I, LLC and Triangle Private Merger Sub, Inc., entities affiliated with Siris Capital Group, LLC, which basically was a secondary bidder. Now the Siris offer is a binding offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Polycom common stock for $12.50 per share.

Not that it matters but Mitel waived its right to renegotiate and so now Polycom has a clear path moving forward.

But now that the embarrassing part is over for Polycom how does it move forward with Siris and with the channel partners who might have thought the Mitel merger was a good move?

Nick Tidd
Nick Tidd

Nick Tidd, the channel leader of Polycom, sat down with CDN at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference in Toronto and said the shift from hardware to an as-a-Service platform is becoming a driving factor along with Skype for Business and the opportunity right now is with the channel creating these types of practices.

“We are seeing the partners with a traditional unified communications practice or storage practice collapsing into a true managed services provider. But a huge component of that is assessments but is more than just the assets. It’s about the workflow and how they want business to be run. This is forcing the partners to go out of that traditional box approach and into a more thought-leadership box,” he said.

Centering this strategy from a products standpoint is Trio and Centro. Centro, formerly Bonfire, is a video solution that centres the screen in the middle of the meeting room and features a four video screen experience with a 360-degree view. Trio or officially RealPresence Trio is a conference phone that works as a smart hub for the meeting room.

As for the Mitel disruption, Tidd told CDN that Siris came into the picture and the company evaluated it and came back with a decision to turn down the Mitel piece. He admits that the company and himself were heavily engaged with Mitel and entered into the integration phase of the deal, but in the end the board did what was in the best interested of the company and accept the second offer.

“Mitel is a great team to work with and they were very gracious. Being Canadian myself it was a real pleasure to work with them. In the end we were both true professionals and we parted amicably. Hopefully there is an opportunity down the road to collaborate again,” Tidd said.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Paolo Del Nibletto
Paolo Del Nibletto
Former editor of Computer Dealer News, covering Canada's IT channel community.

Related Tech News

Featured Tech Jobs

 

CDN in your inbox

CDN delivers a critical analysis of the competitive landscape detailing both the challenges and opportunities facing solution providers. CDN's email newsletter details the most important news and commentary from the channel.