Mitel (News - Alert) announced on Monday that it had started a new reseller program involving its unified communications as a service (UCaaS) packages. Resellers would be able to rebrand these packages and offer them to customers as their solutions. Additionally, Mitel would host these solutions, sparing resellers the costs and hassles of purchasing the needed hardware and obtaining facilities to host the service themselves.

Headquartered in Kanata in Canada’s Ontario province, Mitel Networks Corporation develops cloud-based business communications solutions. In November, it acquired Aastra (News - Alert) Technologies Ltd. for $400 million, making Mitel fifth globally and tops in the Western European market in business communications market share.

The reseller program and the acquisition of Aastra are necessary if Mitel is to remain globally competitive in an already large market that will only get bigger. According to Markets and Markets, the UCaaS market was $2.52 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow to $7.62 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 24.8 percent.

Being fifth in the world at something sounds impressive, but in the overall UC market, the difference between first and fifth is so great, that it’s not nearly as competitive as it seems. Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, and Microsoft (News - Alert) are among the industry giants with a bigger piece of the UC pie than Mitel.

So how does Mitel compete? Entering the UCaaS market is one way. Cloud technology is where everyone is or soon will be and the big guys aren’t dominating UCaaS.

This is why the reseller program is so important to Mitel. You can’t beat the big companies when it comes to advertising and name recognition. So to get the product in as many places as possible, you offer it to resellers and encourage entrepreneurs to become resellers with no need to provide infrastructure. All they have to do is spread the gospel of UCaaS and let Mitel worry about the rest.