Enterprise communications has exited its UCaaS monoculture. Across industries, the C-suite is stepping away from “cloud or bust” rollouts and reintroducing architectural flexibility: cloud where it fits, on-premise where it’s required, and hybrid where it outperforms both.
What’s driving this shift is pure, cold operational logic. Regulatory realities, sovereignty demands, and integration overhead are forcing a reevaluation of one-size-fits-all cloud mandates.
This is the backdrop for Mitel’s strategic rise, which in some respects resembles a return to market prominence, but at its heart is really a rearchitecture positioned around choice, continuity, and compliance.
That rearchitecture is a very deliberate choice rather than a cosmetic reframing. More to the point, it’s aligned with how enterprise communications actually work in 2025.
Market Analysts See Hybrid As the Real Growth Engine
Across analyst desks, precisely no one is asking whether hybrid UC is viable. The truly incisive question is who can deliver hybrid UC with enterprise-grade reliability and roadmap clarity. And Mitel, once considered a bobbing life raft in the UCaaS wave, is back in the analyst spotlight, for all the right reasons.
Here’s what they’re saying:
Zeus Kerravala (ZK Research) told UC Today that Mitel’s $1.15B restructuring was more than financial hygiene—it’s shrewd repositioning for the hybrid cloud era. In fact, Kerravala has long said that communications is the last major frontier to embrace hybrid, and that Mitel is now ideally placed to lead that charge.
Shelly Kramer emphasized in ChannelE2E that this is no short-term optics play. The company has rebuilt its leadership bench with a “stay-in-the-game” mindset. This, she says, is a clear signal of an enterprise-grade comeback built for staying power.
Justin Robbins went further, positioning Mitel’s strategy as a response to lived enterprise conditions. In regulated verticals especially, hybrid is in fact a baseline requirement. Robbins praised Mitel for meeting those customers where their infrastructure—and their risk models—already are.
Anurag Agrawal highlighted in TechAisle that Mitel didn’t pivot to the as-a-service hype cycle with everyone else. Instead, the company stayed focused on hybrid as the center of gravity, and doubled down on AI-powered reliability and secure infrastructure. That bet now looks prescient.
Stephanie Atkinson, in her 2025 Compass Intelligence Innovation Awards coverage, indicated why Mitel stood out in a crowded field: a deep commitment to applied innovation. The judges called out Mitel’s seamless integration of AI and hybrid architecture as a model for how enterprise communications should scale across use cases, geographies, and compliance zones.
Evan Kirstel, writing in Telecom Reseller, emphasizes the market-wide momentum behind hybrid, and how Mitel is uniquely situated to bridge legacy environments with modern collaboration demands through scalable, user-centric design.
And Dave Michels (TalkingPointz), writing in No Jitter, calls it like it is: “The PBX never left—it evolved.” He notes that companies like Mitel are leaning into this truth, offering both continuity and innovation. He frames this not as nostalgia but as market correction. When done right, he argues, hybrid PBX isn’t a flashback—it’s a smarter way forward.
IDC Validates the Pivot: Hybrid UC Is Already the Default
A recent IDC white paper from Mitel and Zoom puts this market shift into perspective, and into numbers. Hybrid is not a fringe pattern. It’s mainstream, and remains the most pragmatic option for flexibility, compliance, and future-readiness. According to IDC:
- 60% of EMEA organizations report using a hybrid UC environment
- 50% of U.S. organizations do the same
Those numbers are expected to grow globally. IDC’s research reinforces what CIOs are seeing in the field: public cloud solves some problems, but hybrid gives them control, and Mitel–Zoom’s hybrid solution delivers just that. It allows businesses to scale, evolve, and remain compliant, while providing their users and teams with consistent, device-agnostic collaboration experiences:
“Hybrid UC positions organizations to meet both immediate and future needs—empowering teams to work efficiently from anywhere while future-proofing their operations.”
Enterprises are aligning UC architectures to include frontline teams, specialized endpoints, distributed operations, and knowledge workers without sacrificing security or uptime. The ability to unify desk-based and mobile workflows, maintain regulatory control, and extend AI-powered productivity across varied environments is precisely why hybrid is gaining ground.
Another, less buzzy way of characterizing this approach is possibly even more resonant for today’s C-suite: It’s operational risk management at scale.
What This Means for the Enterprise Buyer
Mitel’s 2025 story is a case study in market reentry done right:
- A capital reset aligned to future-fit use cases
- A leadership roster designed for enterprise durability
- A technical roadmap that values continuity as much as capability
The market is full of UCaaS providers chasing mid-market volume. Fewer are built for enterprise governance, network heterogeneity, and global complexity. That’s where Mitel is now operating, and why it’s increasingly part of high-stakes RFP conversations once again.
