Luiz Domingos, the Chief Expertise Officer and Head of Massive Enterprise R&D at Mitel, has constructed a distinguished profession spanning over 20 years. Recognized for his revolutionary strategy and deep technical experience, Luiz has constantly delivered high-quality options in enterprise communication, contact middle programs, community administration, and cloud companies.
In his present function at Mitel, Luiz units the strategic course for expertise, emphasizing innovation and reliability. He leads the introduction of cutting-edge applied sciences and ensures the corporate’s portfolio stays on the forefront of the trade. Earlier than becoming a member of Mitel, Luiz served as Chief Product and Expertise Officer at Unify, the place he efficiently managed all the product portfolio and spearheaded the event of disruptive cloud choices.
Mitel is a world chief in enterprise communications, offering a complete vary of options that empower organizations to attach, collaborate, and serve their prospects extra successfully. Providing all the pieces from on-premises programs to cloud-based communication platforms, Mitel delivers dependable, scalable, and revolutionary merchandise that tackle the varied wants of companies of all sizes. With a give attention to seamless integration and a dedication to high-quality consumer experiences, Mitel helps corporations keep related and aggressive in immediately’s quickly evolving office environments.
Many corporations nonetheless depend on legacy communication instruments. Out of your perspective, what are the most important obstacles that outdated programs current to companies immediately?
Many corporations depend on outdated Non-public Department Change (PBX) programs, contact facilities, and fragmented collaboration instruments. Utilizing legacy instruments resembling these can result in an absence of integration and interoperability, as they function with closed architectures and lack correct SW interfaces. This makes integrating with fashionable AI-driven options, CRM platforms, and cloud-based purposes a lot more durable.
When organizations use fragmented, legacy instruments, consumer expertise (UX) and productiveness can endure as utility implementations are usually not tailored to fashionable, versatile work modes – distant, workplace, or cell – and don’t present omnichannel capabilities. Moreover, when too many outdated programs are used, safety dangers grow to be heightened, resulting in elevated vulnerabilities and compliance gaps because of evolving knowledge safety laws like GDPR. Lastly, these legacy instruments additionally trigger greater product upkeep and repair or operational prices, rising the full price of possession.
How do these communication bottlenecks affect a company’s potential to implement AI-driven options successfully?
AI purposes depend on real-time knowledge availability, seamless integration throughout a number of media channels, and automation mechanisms. Nonetheless, legacy programs are inclined to retailer knowledge in inside proprietary codecs that AI cannot entry or faucet into, which impairs AI’s true potential and, in some circumstances, results in fragmentation. To operate accurately, AI requires each structured and unstructured knowledge. Since legacy programs’ knowledge buildings are usually not conducive to that strategy, these programs restrict AI’s potential to investigate conversations, extract enterprise worth, and personalize communication exercise.
Moreover, many AI-driven purposes, resembling sentiment evaluation and speech-to-text, depend on real-time analytics. Outdated infrastructure typically lacks the processing energy and real-time connectivity wanted for such purposes, resulting in latency and inefficiencies inside a enterprise. True AI-driven automation – digital assistants, workflow automation, and so on. – requires deep integration with communication platforms. Repeatedly used legacy programs with outdated or lacking API assist create boundaries and bottlenecks to integration and additional hinder automation capabilities.
Addressing these communication bottlenecks might help organizations unlock the total potential of AI-driven options, bettering effectivity, decision-making, and UX.
How does Mitel strategy communication system modernization for giant enterprises transitioning from legacy programs?
Mitel takes a strategic, hybrid strategy to modernizing unified communications (UC) instruments, serving to enterprises transition from their legacy programs. Quite than implementing a full overhaul, Mitel advocates for and affords hybrid options composed of on-premise purposes and personal and public cloud options with full interoperability. This hybrid mannequin integrates telephony infrastructure, SBC/gateway tools on the community’s edge, UC purposes, and cloud-based collaboration apps, permitting enterprises to modernize at their very own tempo.
As an answer orchestrator, Mitel focuses on creating the required integrations and companies throughout all customer-deployed purposes. Key rules guiding this strategy embrace:
- Hybrid Cloud Deployments – Quite than an entire rip-and-replace strategy, Mitel maintains and updates current on-premise and personal cloud PBX/UC/Contact Facilities whereas integrating fashionable collaboration instruments within the public cloud, making certain enterprises can evolve with out main disruptions.
- APIs and SDKs – Mitel consistently updates and develops APIs and SDKs to bridge the hole between legacy programs and fashionable purposes in collaboration, CRM, and ERP environments. This flexibility permits companies to step by step undertake new companies with out inflicting main disruptions to their each day operations.
- AI Integration with Legacy Techniques – Mitel enhances current communication platforms with AI-driven capabilities resembling visible voice mails, digital assistants/brokers, and real-time transcription. These AI capabilities work with cloud LLMs and in addition leverage small language fashions (SLMs) that may be operated with out main infrastructure funding or upgrades.
- Safety & Compliance-Pushed Upgrades – Mitel prioritizes safety and regulatory compliance, implementing safety requirements resembling end-to-end payload and signaling encryption and knowledge encryption at relaxation. It certifies all merchandise to adjust to the most recent laws in sure industries and regional legal guidelines and laws.
AI is remodeling enterprise communication. What do you see as the subsequent main developments in AI-driven unified communication programs?
AI is getting used to remodel UC programs by enhancing effectivity, automating duties, and bettering enterprise communications. It’s also getting used to strengthen safety. Issues resembling consumer authentication with voiceprint, steady vulnerability assessments, and system safety auditing contribute to stronger safety measures for enterprises.
On the identical time, Agentic AI and digital assistants are increasing. Organizations are enhancing these AI-powered assistants with multi-modal skills that assist numerous communication capabilities, together with dealing with complicated queries, automating responses, helping with scheduling, and knowledge retrieval.
AI can be driving improvements in voice-to-text capabilities, real-time multilingual translations, and sentiment evaluation. These enhancements profit Contact Facilities by bettering worker productiveness and total consumer satisfaction.
Moreover, the usage of GenAI for content material administration is rising as LLMs are being built-in to generate analytics experiences, summaries, authorized and compliant data, and so on. We’ll proceed to see extra AI adoption to drive the UC house as enterprises use AI-driven language fashions to prepare, retrieve, and share enterprise information to enhance collaboration and data-sharing optimization throughout organizations.
How is Mitel getting ready for the rise of AI-powered digital assistants, automation, and predictive analytics in office communication?
Mitel started its AI journey a number of years earlier than the appearance of LLMs, and we proceed to combine AI into our product and expertise partnerships. When relevant, we incorporate AI capabilities into our portfolio to boost buyer options, with a robust give attention to agentic AI, together with Digital Assistants and Digital Contact Heart Brokers. Moreover, Mitel affords AI capabilities resembling pure language processing (NLP), name and assembly analytics, system analytics and predictive reporting, and low code/no-code workflow automation, which all streamline UC and Contact Heart purposes.
How is Mitel leveraging AI and enormous language fashions (LLMs) to boost communication and collaboration for enterprises?
Mitel leverages AI and LLMs to enhance the general communications and collaboration expertise inside an enterprise. As talked about earlier, Mitel integrates AI and LLM capabilities into its merchandise, leveraging superior speech and textual content evaluation (particularly NLP and speech-to-text), clever digital assistants with context reminiscence, and job automation. Mitel can be providing an answer for self-help and buyer assist with AI, incorporating the shopper information base through an AI mannequin coaching course of. These applied sciences improve real-time communication, optimize buyer interactions, guarantee system safety, and supply cost-effective, 24/7 monitoring and assist.
What are the most important challenges in integrating LLMs into enterprise communication programs, and the way is Mitel addressing them?
There are a number of challenges with regards to integrating LLMs into enterprise communication programs, together with knowledge privateness, safety, latency, and the necessity for versatile AI integration. As a world group, knowledge privateness considerations and regulatory compliance (GDPR and the European AI Act) are our high priorities. So, we’re making certain our AI options defend buyer knowledge in any respect prices. For enhanced safety, Mitel is investigating the utilization of SLMs deployed on the buyer’s community edge to restrict and defend knowledge that might be uncovered to public cloud LLMs. In hybrid cloud environments, it’s crucial that each one merchandise have the correct interfaces/APIs to include AI safely and securely. Mitel has modernized its merchandise to allow AI integrations throughout on-premise, hosted, and personal and public clouds. We’re additionally creating versatile workflow creation capabilities that can enable a “carry your individual LLM” (BYO-LLM) strategy to keep away from vendor lock-in.
Fashionable communication requires LLM responses to be instantaneous for real-time collaboration instruments like voice and video, which creates infrastructure challenges. Mitel’s imaginative and prescient is to depend on Edge AI to course of real-time communication and scale back latency for a pure expertise and interplay with AI assistants. Lastly, Mitel is engaged on AI fashions that may be fine-tuned for particular industries like healthcare, finance, and hospitality, making certain extra vertically related and context-aware AI-driven communication.
When it comes to AI-powered pure language processing, what purposes are you most enthusiastic about inside Mitel’s product ecosystem?
Given the measurable and rapid return on funding, Mitel Contact Heart is essentially the most thrilling space for AI-driven LLM and NLP options. The AI-powered digital brokers with chat and speech interplay can deal with buyer inquiries and collect data earlier than escalating to a dwell agent, lowering workload and bettering response occasions. Options resembling name recordings with transcription, summarization for compliance, sentiment analytics for buyer satisfaction, and agent coaching all enhance operations. Mitel’s UC options embrace visible voicemail, sensible search, information administration, and noise cancellation for clearer calls.
As AI reshapes communication, how ought to companies strategy the moral concerns of AI-driven office interactions?
AI is considerably remodeling office communication and collaboration, introducing new consumer and buyer experiences. Nonetheless, these modifications don’t come with out moral challenges. Moral concerns needs to be consistently addressed at each stage of AI implementation, together with coaching AI fashions on numerous datasets to keep away from bias and guarantee honest decision-making. One of many greatest considerations with AI is transparency and explainability, which requires clear phrases and circumstances and disclosure of AI use. Using AI ought to increase human augmentation and empowerment, however it’s not a substitute.
Moreover, safety and AI misuse prevention needs to be thought of to guard towards deepfakes and manipulation of consumer knowledge and credentials.
What steps can organizations take to make sure a easy transition for workers as AI turns into extra embedded in each day workflows?
Enterprises should take steps to foster adoption, belief, and productiveness to make sure a easy transition to AI-based options. Step one for organizations is to create AI insurance policies and enterprise governance to outline AI’s function inside the firm after which follow them. Management must also align on messaging and advocacy for AI adoption and provide coaching to all workers on how AI works, its limitations, and how one can use it successfully.
Concurrently, organizations ought to introduce AI collaboration instruments and integration frameworks that empower workers with AI help to boost the decision-making course of whereas sustaining human oversight. Management must also tackle moral and job safety considerations and supply channels to assemble worker suggestions and measure the incremental worth launched by AI.
By doing all this stuff early within the AI adoption course of, workers will really feel extra assured utilizing the instruments, and organizations will see a quicker ROI on their investments.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Mitel.