Complex Enterprises Need Custom UC And CX

ANZ moves fast, and that speed exposes the difference between “cloud by default” and communications that actually hold up under pressure. We sit down with Mitel and Ethan Global to unpack what it takes to deliver unified communications, contact center, and customer experience platforms across Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific where geography is huge, budgets demand efficiency, and resilience is non-negotiable.

We talk about why Australia and New Zealand are early adopter markets, how hybrid work has shifted to a role-based model, and why complex verticals like government, healthcare, education, emergency services, mining, and transport can’t rely on one-size-fits-all deployments. You’ll hear what customers are asking for right now: redundancy, tight integration into core business systems, managed services, and clear answers on data sovereignty and regulatory expectations.

Then we get into the AI reality check. Instead of vague hype, we focus on what’s delivering immediate value in CX and contact centers, including agent assist, conversation summarization, quality monitoring, and AI that improves IT operations through faster issue resolution and smarter provisioning. We also explore cloud-first mandates, the surprising rise of cloud repatriation when organizations move too quickly, and why the partner ecosystem now drives innovation as much as the platform itself.

If you’re planning a UCaaS or CCaaS modernization, building an AI roadmap for customer experience, or supporting a hybrid workforce at scale, this conversation will help you pressure-test your strategy. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest question about cloud, AI, or enterprise communications.

Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey everyone, Evan Kirstell here. Today we're talking about a region of the world I'm really keen on learning more about with a global innovation and communications powerhouse called MITEL. Terrence and Ricky, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Very well, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Great to have you here from the other side of the world. So we're dealing with uh many time zone changes. Uh you're you're calling in from the future in Australia and New Zealand region, and really excited to have a chat about business in your neck of the woods. Before that, uh Terrence, if you could introduce yourself and your role at Mytel, and um how do you describe Mitel these days?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Uh Martel is an exciting place to be in. And uh I'm uh privileged to be leading the team down in Australia, New Zealand, and we also cover the South Pacific countries like Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Um and yeah, we're uh we're a tight, small team compared to the rest of the MITEL universe. But uh we I'd like to think we've punched above our went. Uh so we're in a very competitive market, and so yeah, we've got to be on our toes.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Brilliant. Well, um, Sydney, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What a great place for you and the team at MyTel to be. And Ricky, how do you describe Ethan Global and your mission and business?

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Yeah, great. Thanks, and uh look, we're we're about 25 years old. We're Australian, founded, owned, and operated. Um we're an ICT provider across varying levels. We have traditional systems integration and technology procurement. Um but we've also provided a lot of uh managed and uh contracted services to our customers, ICT services to our customers, including cloud and unified communications. We've been partnering with MyTel since the early noughties. Uh in fact, we were the we were the first partner to deliver uh a cloud-hosted MyTel platform to market here in ANZ. So we've had a long, long and illustrious history with MyTel in this briefing.

Mitel’s Place In ANZ

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Wow, it sounds like a win-win partnership. Well, let's dive right in. And um, Terrence, uh, you know, I'm not familiar with the ANZ marketplace, so educate us. You have a distinct mix of business and opportunities and verticals and ways of working. Um, how do you describe where Mitel is in the A and Z market these days?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, look, uh had a long and uh illustrious uh history in this region. Um it was present before you know our market deregulated its telecommunications industry back in the late 80s. So MITEL was around in the 70s. Uh I'm more familiar with Mitel in the modern iteration, which is from the 2000s. Um, but what we've ridden in the last 20 years has been, like most industries, uh, disruption, digital disruption, cloud disruption, more recently AI disruption. And I guess what uh I would describe as as a company is our resilience, um, that adaptability where we know in the early 2000s there were 19 vendors like us, and now serving our specific kind of uh unified communications and contact center, there's only about three or four left. So so you know, we know how to ride the uh ups and downs of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Well said. That's uh certainly a key requirement in communications and CX these days. And Ricky, how do you describe the marketplace from your point of view and what's unique about ANZ versus perhaps other parts of the world?

Geography Drives Efficiency In ICT

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Look, I think we're very similar to probably the US and potentially even EU, Evan. Uh but the uh the key difference is that we've got this massive geography of this big massive continent uh with a relatively low population. Um and therefore, you know, there's an intrinsic requirement to you know, and and as a as a consequence, there's a lower GDP. So there's an intrinsic requirement to do less, to do more with less, if you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, no, I mean I think uh it's the year of uh efficiency, doing more with less, getting maximum productivity out of your workforce, especially the frontline workforce. And you know, Terrence, what are you seeing in terms of some of the significant shifts uh globally, but also in your market, is there anything that kind of is maybe a bit different about the ANZ market than other marketplaces?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah. Um so in the world of IT or ICT vendors and and technology providers, um it's pretty universally acknowledged that the Australian and New Zealand markets in particular are early adopter markets. Um you know, we've we've got pretty strong economies, we've got um, you know, strong technology adoption, it's just a cultural thing because we're we're we're quite small in population size. Um, our infrastructure, IT infrastructure, carrier infrastructure, you know, is all um, you know, top-notch. And as a result of that, many things that are introduced into the global technology market are introduced into Australia and New Zealand about anywhere between six months, depending on what it is, software, or even large project uh releases of hardware and other technologies, takes about two to three years um, you know, to be launched here before it's uh used elsewhere. So uh so early adopter market, it's a fast-paced market, and we really have to keep up uh, you know, with the changes pretty quickly, or else you get left behind.

Hybrid Work Becomes Role Based

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah, indeed. And um uh Ricky, you've seen these changes firsthand. Of course, through COVID, the world went upside down in terms of remote work and hybrid work now, and other changes on the frontline worker side. Uh, what are you seeing in terms of the demands, requirements for those organizations, you know, in this post-COVID area, but still in a world of working from anywhere?

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Yeah, look, um it really shifted the paradigm from a workplace perspective when when COVID hit. And now, you know, it's all centered around role rather than location and supporting that role. And so we're seeing our customers make sure that anything that they're delivering from an ICT perspective can shift kind of seamlessly between those two environments.

Vertical Demands And Command Control

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, no, I I think flexibility has been key, particularly, Terrence, for the verticals that Mitel serves. Maybe talk about that because you're known as a company that goes really deep inside certain industries, whether it's government or healthcare or education, and really knowing your your customers' needs there. Um, what sort of demands are coming from your industries and verticals? And how are they maybe a little different from me here in Boston or New York?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah, so so to the earlier point about you know the fast adoption rate of technology over here, um the the world of you know uh of UC and contact center was has been disrupted here since about 2019, 2020, so even before COVID. And what that's meant is that um a lot of the mass market industries, uh small business, have really gravitated towards multi-tenant cloud. And what that's meant is that MITEL has really dug into its roots, which is the mid-market and large enterprise space, and really doubled down on that. So healthcare and government and education, as you alluded to, are absolutely strong points for Mitel as verticals, but also blue light, emergency services, and any environment where there's a command and control need, such as mining and resources and mass transport infrastructure companies, these are the kinds of companies and organizations who uh really demand the type and nature of the MITEL solutions and the services that our partners like Ethan can provide. So, yeah, it very much is has been a case of we and Ethan adapting and uh and and being able to customize solutions for these more complex customers who we are now really more focused on compared to say 10 or even certainly 20 years ago.

Resilience Integration And Sovereignty

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, uh those days you bought a plain vanilla product and you just sort of plugged it in. And Ethan and Ethan Global, maybe talk about what's required of a company like yours in terms of integration, services support, network management, monitoring. I mean, what are the typical requirements you see in a deployment with Mitel?

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah, look, uh I mean, customers want to make sure that they've got resilience, resiliency in the environment that gets delivered. But they also, you know, that they need we need to choose the solution that we deploy for our customers based on what their aspect is and what their approach is. Some are very, you know, they want to be modernized, they're a cloud-first organization. So, you know, we would need to build a solution that can deliver to that. But conversely, for those more complex organizations, the Terence reference, which we are also doubling down on, um, you know, that there's a need for um to support complex environments. There needs to be integration into some of their core business systems. Um, sovereignty is is becoming a you know very much more common discussion point with a lot of these customers now. Um, and you know, they they don't want to have outages, particularly in that environment that I described earlier, where you might have hybrid working and therefore a uh a mobile role or employee, you know, you need to keep those critical services going no matter where they are and what location they happen to be in.

CX Evolution And AI Infusion

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, really, really great point. Uh changing gears, Terrence. I mean, uh traditionally known as the Unified Communications Powerhouse, but you're also now very much in the context better customer experience space. How's that going? Uh what has been the uh entryway for you into customers for CX?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, look, CX has just been evolving over the last you know many years, uh, from simple contact center in the past to what is very much a broad and varied and integrated environment now in which uh you know we have to work very tightly with our customers and our partners, you know, to be able to customize it. And customization is key. Um but the the influx or the the arrival and expansiveness now of AI within the CX environment is really the the differentiator, uh, you know, from simple you know, chatbots uh and the like to proper um omni-channel you know contact centers with uh AI supporting that um is really transforming almost everything that we're doing. Um so from from the the the the partners that we we uh the partnerships that we keep, uh technology partners, right through to uh the actual integrated partners that we have, it really is a a very multifaceted approach. No longer do we produce a call center or contact center from within our our our solutions, it's very much what our partners bring to us, technology and channel partners.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Brilliant. And you have so many new offerings and investments underway in AI and endpoints and applications. Uh, what's most exciting for you and the team? You must feel like a kid in a candy to our offering all this new technology to your customers.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah, absolutely. Uh look, I I think it's it is down to to the uh the technology partners we keep. Um, you know, producing everything ourselves uh 20 years ago is another thing of the past. To be able to keep up with a rate of change in the market. Um we we we we cannot do everything ourselves. And certainly the tightness uh of our integrations and the closeness to our partners like Ethan are really where our success is uh is tied to going forward.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Brilliant. And you know, Ricky, uh, you know, you're you're talking to business leaders, tech IT leaders every day. What are they telling you about their plans for the next wave of investment and transformation in AI and workplace reorganization and new workflows? What's on their mind in the A and Z region?

Cloud First Reality And Repatriation

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, look, a genetic AI is obviously a big discussion point, but there's a lot of organizations that just that haven't figured out how to truly embrace that. But what we are seeing, you know, is the most immediate value is with AI is things like you know, the agent assist, core summarization capabilities, quality monitoring. But behind the scenes, we're also seeing AI support um the IT operation as well. So, you know, we're we're building, designing, and deploying AI capability into the way that we deliver our services so that we can introduce speedy issue resolution, um, provisioning and deprovisioning capabilities, you know, that these are all immediate values. But I think, you know, future state, there's going to be a point where these things all combine into some kind of agentic AI output, but um we're not there yet.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And I I understand Australia has some aggressive cloud-first mandates and other regulatory requirements for procurement being rolled out. Um what does that look like and how are you positioning yourself and Mitel for those conversations?

Channel Strategy And Tech Alliances

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, we you might recall earlier I mentioned, Evan, that we, you know, we were the first MyTel partner that is to bring a cloud-hosted solution to market. So, yeah, and that that was in the early noughties. So, yeah, we've been we've been bracing the cloud for you know almost two decades now. So we're we're well positioned to deliver to customers that that that need that. But we're also seeing some customers that have kind of gone in headfirst into the cloud and realizing that maybe they haven't transformed quickly enough, or they're just not ready to be a cloud-first organization. And so there's there's some repatriation activities. So the key for us is to make sure that we can support them as they evolve or if they shift backwards and forwards. And yeah, we believe we're perfectly poised for that.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Brilliant. And Terrence, uh, you know, maybe talk about your momentum the rest of this year. What's uh what's working for you, what sort of partnerships and technology uh relationships are helping you win in this marketplace, in addition to obviously the amazing partnership of Ethan?

Decades Long Customer Journey Stories

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah, yeah. That's a that's a that's a great question. Uh in line with our adaptation to the changing demands in the marketplace, the arrival of uh a lot of new competitors, um, and our uh our focus really on uh the complex large enterprise space has meant that we have significantly changed the nature and focus of our channel. We're a 100% uh channel business in uh in uh in ANZ in the South Pacific. Um but that channel was a channel from the last 20 or 30 years that was catering for anybody and uh and in all industries. Uh what we've done here is we've really structured um our channel to be more towards the enterprise and government and large enterprise and government at that. Um and so the skills that they bring, the managed services capabilities, the technical knowledge, the ability really to orchestrate and weave multiple technologies and services together is key. Um and then as I mentioned earlier as well, the OEM or technology partners who who you know go to market now with us. Uh so globally, companies like Everbridge, ASC, Talkative, and more locally, um, you know, companies like OpenIQ. Um, you know, we're talking about vendors who, with a deep focus and development and RD into those specializations, um, you know, that is really what is forging us ahead. Whilst we maintain, you know, the dependable, resilient, um, you know, fully redundant technology platform that is almost the given. It's like the concrete pour in a in a building. You know, a lot of the uh the things that really gain the interest of uh a lot of customers now is that software, is that integration, and the services that our partners weave around all of that. So partnership, you know, as is probably so much more apt a term these days at the at how we run our business and how we go to market compared to even five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Brilliant. Do you have so many customers in the region? I'd hate to ask you if we're a favorite child, but any any customers or wins or stories, anecdotes that um might prove interesting?

What Ethan Invests In Next

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah. Um probably the ones that stand out are our customers that have been with us for decades. And the interesting thing is what they do, and some people think, well, decades means that uh, you know, you guys, you know, must be hanging on for dear life to you know whoever chose you that long ago. But quite quite the contrary. So I guess I'll draw the attention to uh more the a couple of industries that uh that we're really strong at. Um uh that's education, um, where we have a large state-based um uh organization with uh about one and a half thousand schools, starting off with a mixed fleet of uh of uh of telephone systems, you know, in the um in the early noughties. And and they started to standardize on MITL, but more recently in the last uh you know three or four years, migrated to cloud. And then now we're you know, we're looking at a future where where AI and and bringing in things like mass notification and uh and and other technologies from those partners I mentioned are now being considered. Uh, and then the other one is retail, similar, similar story, you know, retail organization that uh has evolved with us stores across Australia and New Zealand and have done the same thing. Um, and same with residential aged care with with Ethan, one of their customers who has gone the journey with Ethan and MITEL for the last you know 10 or more years, following the same thing, you know, starts with a TDM um right through to the digital era and then into the cloud era, and they're now in AI. But to see that kind of loyalty and uh and consistency of adoption of every turn, every new introduction from my tell, you know, that's the kind of thing that pleases me most. That that long, long range, you know, long time frame customer journey.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Brilliant. And uh final question, uh Ricky, uh what are you excited about this year as as uh you continue to support and secure new customer wins? Where what investments or opportunities are on your radar to kind of help customers transform the business? And what what internally are you doing to kind of support them over the upcoming year?

Australia Travel Debate And Opals

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Yeah, I think um the thing that excites me the most, Evan, is this continual evolving complexity. Um, because I think with complexity comes opportunity and the ability for us to solve problems and and create solutions for our customers. You know, we love customers that you know do the long-term thinking and that they're thinking strategically because we you know we love to kind of hone outcomes for them that are going to suit them. But equally, we you know we we really love being with that customer for their journey as well, so that we can help them adapt and evolve. Whatever the ICT underpinning we're delivering to them can evolve with their change or their market change.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Brilliant. Well, this is all very intriguing. I think I'm gonna ask for a site visit, uh, you know, to Australia, New Zealand, a brief stop in Fiji, of course, that's part of your region. Uh visit some customers and partners, and then take a couple of weeks' vacation. In fact, I have my shirt already for that trip. Uh, where should I go? Uh um no bias here, but after the site visits for couple weeks vacation where an A and V or elsewhere uh what island should I uh uh visit?

Closing Thanks And Listener Prompt

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Terrence oh look I'm a very biased Sydney Slider and uh in the next in the next six months I I think they're trialing from from New York to Sydney direct so not far for for you to get to to get a direct flight but I'm guessing my compatriots who's a proud Queenslander is probably gonna be promoting a different location right Ricky oh you've got to get to Queensland Evan's you know home of the Great Barrier Reef it's in the tropics and subtropics it's got beautiful beaches probably the best in Australia or amongst the best I can't go past Queensland mate.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Sydney's a nice place to visit though believe it or not I'm I'm obsessed with Australian opals and the opal mining industry so I'm gonna I'm gonna get a pick and a shovel and head right out to the outback if we're in about 130 degree heat and and find my fortune. But much more to talk about as far as that trip goes and thanks guys for joining and uh sharing the vision and the update. Learned a lot. Thanks Vivin thanks everyone for listening watching and welcome any questions to share the episode thanks everyone bye bye