Mitel has launched a new developer initiative, making it easier for channel partners, technology partners and customers to build custom applications and integrations via CloudLink, the company’s modern cloud services architecture, officials said.

Traditionally, developers used the Mitel Solutions Alliance (MSA) to build integrations. Now users will do so through the Mitel developer portal, which is connected to CloudLink.

Created in 2019, CloudLink allows on-site or cloud customers to collaborate and deploy applications. It has more than 2 million active users.

Mitel’s Swapan Nandi

Swapan Nandi is senior director of next-gen solutions at Mitel.

“We believe CloudLink will provide the framework to organically grow a vibrant communications developer community,” Nandi wrote in a letter to the Mitel community last April. “By enabling CloudLink for every Mitel platform, our partners will have a significant customer base to serve. And by developing an open API ecosystem for CloudLink, Mitel’s platforms will integrate more easily with other enterprise applications.”

CloudLink Origins

Innovation is often born out of necessity.

Mitel developed CloudLink because it found itself in a less than ideal situation. The company initially had to integrate with organizations operating multiple PBX platforms. The introduction of CloudLink removed this headache, linking the five platforms that Mitel operates in today. Connecting across these platforms meant easier development of applications.

Earlier this year, Mitel MiVoice Office 400 and MiVoice 5000 customers were first to get the CloudLink gateways that provided access to the Mitel APIs. Gateways are now available for MiVoice Business and MiVoice MX-One platforms.

As for the Mitel developer portal, it allows users to integrate communications capabilities like voice, messaging, chat and video with automated, application-driven workflows. Enterprises can dramatically improve customer and constituent service quality, support employee collaboration and lower costs, the company said.

Mitel’s Venkat Nagaswamy

“Now, any customer of ours can use it. Any partner of ours can use it. Or even people that we don’t even know about can use it,” said Mitel CMO Venkat Nagaswamy.

Also, adopting CloudLink and its API ecosystem doesn’t mean organizations have to overhaul their infrastructure, Nagaswamy said. Customers can integrate their on-premises technology with the modern cloud platform.

“People feel that a lot of the new applications can only be delivered on a cloud platform,” he said. “What we’ve done with CloudLink is enable you to use your applications in a simple way. You know, it’s really about making sure that the original investment our customers made in us means they can get the full value out of it.”

Industry Use Case

Health care is one vertical benefiting from Mitel’s technology, the company said. Information from hospital software can feed into …

… Mitel’s contact center call control, which integrates CloudLink. From there, the system sends medical professionals details via messaging. For example, the technology can determine which ward a doctor should go to next to treat patients, as opposed to leaving that to the physician’s discretion.

Mitel’s Graham Bevington

Graham Bevington is executive vice president and chief sales officer at Mitel.

“Hospitals want to be sure that the doctor is doing his rounds in a certain order to maximize discharges and to make sure that they could rotate the beds and bring new patients into [the fold],” Bevington said.

The use of Mitel’s CloudLink – and the integration via APIs – can take personnel or supply tracking to another level. Hospital engineers can now create tools via the developer portal to determine where to place additional resources in a hospital. For instance, developers can create tools to gauge how many nurses should be stationed in different areas of a facility. Health care is one example where leadership can implement API-driven workforce management systems, but the same techniques can be applied to hospitality, education and other verticals.

“The first issue is that [industries] can’t employ enough people today. It’s very difficult for them to get staff in the post-COVID era. We’ve seen the change in the workforce, and they’re just struggling to compete now and get enough employees to physically work a hotel,” Bevington said. “It’s driving people to need to think about their infrastructure differently.”

The Future

Thinking about infrastructure differently is good news for channel partners, said Raul Castanon, senior research analyst with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

451 Research’s Raul Castanon

“These technological advances give them the ability to provide more customization or vertical-focused applications. And that’s something that Mitel has been working on for several years. Health care … education … they’re very strong in those sectors. So those applications enable them to provide other services that their customers may be wanting.”

Mitel is approaching infrastructure in new ways when it comes to addressing the internet of things. The global forecast suggests IoT devices will triple from 9.7 billion in 2020 to more than 29 billion IoT devices in 2030. For example, Mitel wants organizations to use its APIs to convert real-time status intelligence into early notification systems. These can help government agencies, educational institutions, hotels and other businesses to ensure the safety of constituents, students, consumers and employees across large areas, the company said.

“CloudLink remains a critical element of Mitel’s road map and a focal development environment for Mitel’s R&D organization. I’m excited to announce that CloudLink will now also become an asset to our partners’ road maps, as they explore development opportunities to define vertically aligned communications and collaboration applications as part of their communications portfolio,” Nandi said. “Ultimately, our joint customers will be the biggest winners, fueled by new, powerful sources of innovation that will help them compete more effectively in our digital world.”