Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

Phone.com, a pioneering company in the field of cloud communications, has kept it simple and kept its mandate from its beginning: to deliver excellent and affordable cloud communications services to the SMB market, which Rabban defines as twenty employees and smaller. Today, phone.com works to deliver larger enterprise style services to the SMBs at prices that make sense for SMBs. In this podcast, Ari Rabban, CEO provides an overview of the firm’s history and some insight into the company’s newest developments. “There’s no secret sauce,” says Rabban in discussing his company’s ongoing success in a competitive market. We learn however is that delivering good service and consistent on-boarding, allows phone.com to enjoy high customer loyalty. “I believe in execution,” says Rabban. Rabban discusses a new control panel, my.phone.com and a new private label program, directed at the firm’s channel. Rabban will be co-hosting a session and a chat at this week’s Cloud Comms Conference for the Cloud Communications Alliance.

Visit www.phone.com

Being able to talk to a human is really nice

According to Barry Williams, Director of Marketing and Platform R&D at Zoom International, most of the WFM (workforce management) vendors were leaving out smaller firms and centers. Companies in this space could not afford the heavy implementation costs it takes to go to one of the enterprise providers. This smaller market is dominated by on-prem solutions, so a cloud-based, drag and drop, scheduling and forecasting tool filled a gap. Earlier this summer, Zoom launched Elevēo. In this podcast we learn about the progress Elevēo has experienced since its launch. “We got a lot more interest than we expected,” says Williams. “We are getting interest from both commercial and enterprise contact centers.” Williams outlines new offerings on the platform including an agent portal. Williams also points out that Zoom has not forgotten the personal touch. “Being able to talk to a human is very nice.” We learn about a process of continuous improvement that every subscriber enjoys. We also learn about Elevēo’s look into back office.

Visit https://www.eleveo.com/

Jeff Pulver, as Dean Acheson might have put it, was "present at the creation". In the nineties, as the newly deregulated telecoms market got underway and technologies that are still with us emerged, Pulver ran a media company offering publications and events on UC. Today, Pulver, who serves as Executive Vice Chairman at Skrumble, sees the coming decade as an age of promise in communications. “Now we’re living in a time when dreams are happening, and that they are being fulfilled, and now a small company can compete with a large company on the delivery of services,” says Pulver. “We are no longer disadvantaged because of our size.”

In this podcast, Pulver previews his upcoming session, “Now Is the Best Time to Be Selling UCaaS” that will be at presented in SkySwitch’s Vectors 2019 in October. While recognizing short term challenges, Pulver discusses his vision of an emerging era of invention and of positive change, especially for the channel, who will now be able to build unique solutions for their customers. Pulver discusses his concept of purple minutes, as part of the type of possibilities that await UC companies. “We will be living in an a age of digital bread crumbs,” says Pulver. Pulver believes that in the coming decade, humans will be able to do something most previous generations were either unable to do or could only do through a select group of generational representatives: to leave a digital history of each individuals experiences, thoughts and hopes.

Visit www.vectors2019.com and www.skyswitch.com to learn about the conference.

Vectors provides a special event for SkySwitch partner community

“We empower our resellers, and help them get more business, improve their EBITDA and generate a better revenue stream for their businesses,” says Jayson Jones, VP of Sales at SkySwitch. Part of that reseller care includes an event called Vectors. “This is for them,” says Jones about Vectors as an event focused on SkySwitch resellers. Vectors is an event where companies can learn about new opportunities, refine their approach and learn how to grow. In this podcast we learn that Jeff Pulver, a well-known figure in telecoms and UC, will be keynoting. Keenan will be talking about finding the “gap” to sell into, and his presentation includes an interactive session. Amy Lind will be there to keynote on Wednesday to offer a big view of the market. “Transform Cloud Communications” will be the theme. “We’re going to assist our resellers on how to get there,” says Jones. Jones feels that the event reflects the high value that SkySwitch places in the reseller. Jones says that the company tries to put the tools for success on a “silver platter”, to make getting to a new level accessible to each reseller. Training sessions and sessions on how to prep a company for sale, will also be occurring. The event will include an expo featuring sponsor, Poly.

Visit www.vectors2019.com

“BroadSource now represents a global product development and systems integration company,” says Haydn Faltyn co-founder and CEO of BroadSource. In this podcast, Faltyn discusses the development of his company from an early association with Telstra to its emergence as a firm offering global services. BroadSource has recently joined the Cloud Communication Alliance as a part of an over all initiative to broaden the company’s footprint around the world. EMU, which stands for, “Extract, Manipulate and Update anything on the platform through EMU's simple portal or powerful Integration Development Environment,” is the company’s flagship product, and as Faltyn explains, is named after the Australian emu, a nod to the company’s Australian roots. Faltyn maps out how his firm is helping with the large-scale migration, now under way, from traditional on-prem platforms to the cloud. Faltyn also discusses the hot cloud communications topic of consumption and end user utilization: the issue of delivering relevant and needed features to customers that are valuable and create customer loyalty. Faltyn describes his joining the CCA as an opportunity to “listen and learn,” reflecting the CCA’s tradition of healthy coopetition.

BroadSource has significant offerings for MSP, carriers and channel firms. Enterprise end users with contact centers will learn about significant offerings from this podcast.

https://www.broadsource.com.au/

“We enable Teams to be hooked up to the rest of the world, specifically to be able to hook up to the public switch telephone network (PSTN) and to be able to interwork with existing PBXs that the customers may have, make it work with existing analog devices…” says  Kevin Isacks, Vice President of Edge Engineering and Products for Ribbon Communications. Isacks describes how Ribbon’s Session Border Controllers are basically needed to take the Teams experience and make it available to a customer’s installed network and devices, and to be able to use Teams to make inbound and outbound calls. In this podcast Isacks outlines the SBC’s role in a number of circumstances and then connects those scenarios to use cases for carriers, MSPs and how these occasions represent channel opportunities. Isacks notes that maintaining existing equipment can be critical where staff or the nature of the enterprise involved, rely on using he type of devices that were in place prior to Teams being introduced. “We’re really seeing accelerated growth, says Isacks, reporting that his team is witnessing Teams from going to pilot groups of 40 or 50 users to 1000 users. Isacks also discusses Azure’s place in this part of the digital transformation story. We also learn about transformations occurring at the carrier level.

Visit www.ribboncommunications.com and note the SBC pages for service providers and SBC pages for enterprises.

According to Ken Lienemann, Chief Revenue Officer at CoreDial, the new CoreNexa Contact Center Certification Program “democratizes the contact center for the SME (the small to medium size enterprise). The recently announced program consists of a comprehensive suite of training that enables CoreDial’s partners to independently sell and deploy the company’s award-winning CoreNexa™ Contact Center platform. The certification program includes extensive training on product, and how to sell, configure and support customer solutions. Certification is optional for qualifying CoreDial partners and there is no fee to enroll. In this podcast Lienemann outlines how the program works, the programs simple accessibility to the channel, and how the program benefits reseller and MSP partners.

An important component of the program consists of helping partners identify “non-traditional contact center” opportunities. According to Lienemann, many people perceive a contact center to be a large building containing thousands of agents. CoreDial’s training helps partners actually see that many small and medium sized businesses have contact center operations, whether or not they are labeled as such, and that these represent new customer conversations and sales opportunities. CoreDial partners control pricing, so partners can customize for local market conditions in what can be an excellent margin part of their sales portfolio.

Visit www.coredial.com

The commodification of UC is a problem for the channel and SkySwitch is working to offer something different. In this podcast, Eric Hernaez, Founder and President of SkySwitch discusses how his company leads in offerings that are white labeled. The podcast offers a discussion of how SkySwitch enables their partners to go to market with unique products and services that stand out, create real value and improve customer loyalty. Hernaez describes a highly personalized approach to his partner community that in turn enables the partners to go to market with highly customized products. In October, SkySwitch will offer their reseller community a special conference, Vectors 2019, that will feature Jeff Pulver, a visionary of the UC world.

Visit www.skyswitch.com

Jason Wyatt, Technical Marketing Manager defines Microsoft Teams and Direct Routing work and how they can work for the enterprise. In this podcast, Wyatt discusses a brief history of previous offerings and how Teams and direct routing bring things forward. We learn about the available options in choosing between calling plans and direct routing and Wyatt brings us through deployment options, on-premises and cloud (MS Azure). Wyatt describes how AudioCodes SBCs, from an early starting point in the evolution of Teams, have been an important piece of technology making these options and choices accessible to many users, sites and previous installed networks.

Visit www.audiocodes.com

Earlier this month, Star2Star Communications, announced that the Star2Star Application Framework and StarPhone for Desktop products are now Citrix Ready. The Citrix Ready program makes it easy for customers to identify complementary products and solutions that can enhance Citrix environments. In this podcast, Colin Johnston, Executive Vice President of Strategic Channels, outlines the announcement, discussing ease of use, security, including a very simple and fast way to add and remove users. Johnston sees this as an additional and important channel offering, creating a new theater of opportunity. Indeed, we learn that the opportunity is not only considerable in terms of potential market, but that this is a highly profitable sale. Johnston also points to important cost savings: no equipment refresh.

Visit http://www.star2star.com/.