CHANNEL
FEEDBACK
A Multi-Vendor Strategy
No single platform
Do you have the right portfolio to ensure you win more than your fair share of deals? What advice do Channel
suppliers have for partners wishing to construct an unbeatable portfolio?
provides best of breed
applications across the
piste but on the other
hand single vendor solutions
are more likely to have better
interoperability. e di culty
is knowing where to draw the
trade-o line.
Justin Hamilton-Martin,
Director of Centile says that
with many people working from
home, it can be easy to forget
about mobile.
“We’ve seen a massive
upswing in the use of our own
mobile app, so that indicates
people are using their mobiles
even more: perhaps because
sometimes it is easier to move
to another spot at home where
it’s quieter to attend a virtual
meeting, or because we have all
become so used to our mobiles
being the centre of our lives, with
the ability to initiate calls, video
and chat from a variety of apps.
As people start to work
outside the home again, the
ability to have seamless access to
— and transition across business
apps — will be an even bigger
selling point for mobile users.
Customers will look for a native
green button dialling with true
FMC capability (vs app dialling)
and this is where we will see
FMC come into its own.
Peter Oosthuizen, London
Partner Sales Manager for
Spit re says his advice to those
in the channel who are looking
to construct an unbeatable
portfolio is to look at the end to
end solution. Everything from
the voice environment, the PBX,
the connectivity to the support.
Each component needs to be well
designed to provide an e cient
and reliable service. You then
need to consider accountability.
When it comes to something
as sensitive as voice, when you
start adding bits together from
multiple vendors it just adds
complexity and becomes a
nightmare to troubleshoot and
you end up in a game of nger
pointing. Channel suppliers are
far better o partnering with a
single channel supplier who can
o er an end to end voice solution
and take full accountability of the
service.
So how do you choose that
provider? Well that single
provider should have a multivendor
network strategy, so
the channel partner is still
able to reap the bene ts of
such inherent resiliency. e
additional bene t is that they
are also then able to hold a
single supplier accountable for
the service and have a single
point of contact.
Spit re manage the quality
Interoperability has to work for everyone and for every application
of our end to end solution via
our methodology which looks
at every component within the
route of the voice packet to
ensure the appropriate LAN
con guration has been designed
for quality voice.”
Graham Wilkinson at
Beyond Connectivity is also
looking to make sure resellers
do not miss the mobile
opportunity.
“ e Beyond platform
has the potential to o er a
true mobile SIM where text
messages and mobile calls
can be recorded, and a mobile
phone also becomes a user’s
extension number. It also o ers
a special low use, low cost
education package – combining
internal communication with
emergency outgoing calls for
schools and further education
campuses.
e current Coronavirus
home working trends and
Government directives have
focused peoples’ minds and
remote working will become
more of the norm in the future.
It will force companies to really
think about their pandemic
planning, disaster recovery and
crisis management.
In the past a building re or
a ood was quite rare and only
a ected a small proportion of
the working population. But
this now is the biggest crisis we
have ever faced since the war. I
don’t think any business will not
take exible working seriously,
not just working from home but
doing it e ectively. If you need
to record calls for example and
meet other compliance criteria
can you still do that properly
working from home?
We are witnessing a whole
working evolution and a change
in ethos. It’s much more than
just swapping a PBX and
moving comms into the cloud.”
32 | IP Telephony 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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