Mitel WX bets next phase of unified communications will be won on the floor, not in the meeting room

For the better part of my 30-year career as an analyst, unified communications has been designed around the person at a desk, bouncing between meetings, chat and email. That made sense when the pandemic pushed everyone onto video. It makes far less sense when roughly 80% of the global workforce doesn’t sit at a desk at all. In fact, I’ve argued that front-line, non-deskbound workers have been forgotten by most of the UC industry, which is why so many nurses, warehouse workers and others rely on consumer devices and tools. That’s the gap Mitel Networks Corp. is targeting with Mitel Workforce Experience, which the company recently launched. Mitel WX brings voice, messaging, meetings, contact center and vertical applications into a single client that adapts to the worker’s role rather than the device. Following a pre-briefing I attended with Eric Hanson, Mitel’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, and Martin Bitzinger, executive vice president of product management, it’s apparent that “toggle tax” across disjointed applications…