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JUST A MINUTE
SANGOMA LAUNCHES ZULU
Sangoma has some lofty ambitions to become a top
5 UC vendor in just 5 years. As their global revenues
surpass £100m and with 200 partners in the UK they
are certainly a company on the move. Designed for
their PBXact phone system Sangoma has developed a
new WebRTC based app, Zulu UC. Here Richard Smith,
Sales Director, explains why partners should take a
look.
COMMS BUSINESS MAGAZINE (CBM): TELL US ABOUT ZULU AND WHY ITS
SIGNIFICANT?
RICHARD SMITH (RS): Built on WebRTC technology Zulu is our UC app
which has been designed for the PBXact phone system. We are really
targeting that Skype for Business type environment where users can
interact with people outside their organisation whatever technology
they are using. With the conference calls for example, it’s just a link for
participants to click on and it is all done in the browser.
It’s significant because we excel at the basic bits which the vast
majority of businesses still want. They want dial tone, queues, IVRs,
they want some of the stuff they are used to and for it to just work. We
have a great footing to be able to take this technology to the next step.
CBM: WHAT DOES THE ROADMAP LOOK LIKE?
RS: Busy lamp field support will be the next feature. The app can then
act as a desk phone replacement where you will be able to see and
manage all your extensions. Video conferencing is another feature we
are adding to the WebRTC client, we already have the functionality on
the server side but users will soon be able to do that through the app.
We are also looking at the operator panel, long term it will probably
replace our UCP. A lot of the features and functionality will most likely
move into Zulu. That means we will do the queue management stuff all
through the app
CBM: HOW ARE YOU GOING TO COMPETE WITH THE BIG BRANDS?
RS: It’s down to the Channel and how we engage them. I think the
Avaya issue was a big deal for the Channel, it made them think that
perhaps they can’t rely on the big companies anymore because they
might not be around in a few years.
I think having the Opensource heritage helps too. A lot of people
will have heard of Asterisk and when that leads to us that will open
the conversation around commercials. Italy is a big opportunity for us,
they have it written into their law now that if there is a government or
education based project then they have to look at Opensource first.
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