Mitel turns up contact centre heat with prairieFyre buy

Move driven by desire to cater for partners building out datacentre practices

Comms vendor Mitel has acquired one of its OEM suppliers, prairieFyre Software, in a bid to bolster its position in the $3bn contact centre market.

PrairieFyre supplied Mitel with its existing contact centre solution but the NASDAQ-listed vendor has taken its technology in house in a deal that carried a net cash cost of $20m.

Mitel said the acquisition - which it said was driven by partners - would hand it a "cornerstone development platform" to address rising demand for cloud-based contact centre solutions, while creating pull through for its core IP telephony and UC solutions.

Citing research from Ovum, Mitel said the contact centre market is growing and worth over $3bn annually.

Mitel chief executive Richard McBee said: "In response to customer demand, many of our IT resellers have started building out specialised contact centre practices and are asking for a solution tightly integrated and aligned with Mitel's product development and roadmaps.

"We believe the highly integrated nature of our existing OEM relationship with prairieFyre prior to the acquisition makes this a low risk, high reward and compelling opportunity to immediately capitalise on market demand, expand revenue and margins, and positions Mitel for ongoing growth."

Mitel has created a new contact centre group that will be led by prairieFyre boss Chris Courneya.

"The integration of prairieFyre into Mitel at this point in the market gives both organisations the scale and skills to more effectively meet this demand, and grow our contact centre business," said Courneya.