Mitel WX Targets Frontline, Non-Deskbound Workers With Role-Based UC Client

Mitel WX brings voice, messaging, meetings, contact center and vertical applications into a single client. It is aimed at workers such as nurses, warehouse workers and plant technicians, who often rely on consumer devices because traditional UC platforms were built for knowledge workers and then extended to everyone else, according to the report. Eric Hanson, Mitel's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, said many in the industry have attempted to build something that addresses the needs of everyone but is optimized for no one. He also said communications was treated as a mature, almost commoditized part of the stack and "wasn't really deemed to be strategic until it didn't work."

Mitel cited a Vanson Bourne study it commissioned, which surveyed about 2,000 workers in Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. The study found that 57% of workers waste time switching among an average of seven tools, 79% reach for voice when rapid action is needed, and frontline workers are twice as likely to use unapproved tools. The study was vendor-funded, so it should be treated as directional, but SiliconANGLE said it aligns with what information technology leaders report: when the sanctioned tool does not fit the job, workers default to WhatsApp and IT loses control.

Mitel WX is not a MiCollab refresh or a rebrand of the clients Mitel inherited from Unify. Martin Bitzinger, Mitel's executive vice president of product management, said the company basically started with a blank sheet of paper. Only foundational functions, such as voice, are baked into the core client. Everything else is a plugin that administrators enable by role. That is a longer path to a commercially available product, but SiliconANGLE reported it will likely lead to greater success because the code is cleaner and purpose-built.

In a demonstration, a hospital desk worker who also handles contact center queues sees chat and call queues, along with an electronic health record panel, on a single screen. An environmental services worker in the same hospital sees a streamlined view with work group log-in and task completion. A doctor driving in takes calls on a work number via Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Calls migrate between mobile and desktop rather than being transferred, a small detail that matters when the caller is a patient.

Bitzinger stressed that IT, not the user, owns role design. "It can't be left up to the user to do all of those things," he said. Administrators manage templated roles in Mitel Central, including across multiple domains common in health systems built through acquisition.

For Mitel, WX's competitive differentiation is deployment flexibility. Although every vendor supports public cloud today, Mitel also lets customers use hybrid, private cloud, on-premises and edge deployments, with the same client built on a common application programming interface for both its CloudLink cloud back end and on-premises Mitel Central. Asked whether a customer could run Mitel WX fully air-gapped, Bitzinger answered: "They can run it completely air-gapped, completely on-prem in their basement if that's what they prefer."

The underrated feature is private push notifications. Most mobile UC apps rely on Apple and Google push services to ring a phone. Mitel WX can deliver push notifications over the customer's own network, so calls and alerts still arrive in a hospital running private 5G or on a site that loses its internet connection. SiliconANGLE reported that for regulated and mission-critical environments, that is a meaningful differentiator.