INTERVIEW Peter Gradwell - Gradwell Communications
“There is still a lot of on-premise PBX market still to go for but interestingly many early adopters of hosted
telephony are now starting to come to the end of their original supply contracts and are now looking for new
products, services and significantly, new suppliers” Gradwell Communications CTO Peter Gradwell
New
Directions
Founded in 1988, Bath based CSP Gradwell
Communications is on a new journey following an
investment by PE fi rm Chiltern Capital 18 months ago.
Comms Business caught up with their new management
team to fi nd out where the company was heading
According to founder
and CTO Peter
Gradwell, Gradwell
Communications reached
a plateau following three years
of rapid growth after initial
investments were made in the
company eight years ago.
Gradwell is a provider
of hosted telephony and
connectivity services to SMEs
across the UK, with a current
base of over 22,000 customers.
e Company is one of the
largest independent providers in
the sector and has developed its
own proprietary asterisk based
software as a service platform.
“18 months ago we started
working with private equity rm
Chiltern Capital to support our
management team in delivering
our ambitious growth plan by
optimising current routes to
market and improving customer
service as the market transitions
from on premise to cloud.
We have made a number of
key appointments to that team
with Simon Curry becoming
CEO, the appointment of
Jonathan Ross as Head of
Marketing and Jamie Ward as
Sales and Marketing Director.”
Gradwell, which has built
their own asterisk based hosted
telephony platform and portal
is set to launch a new product
shortly called Wave. Beta testing
was to take place in August with
an nal launch date anticipated
in October alongside a launch
event still to be announced at
the time of writing.
What will Wave have to offer?
“Wave will sit on Amazon’s
AWS Cloud,” says Gradwell.
“It is an app focussed platform
integrating Microsoft O ce 365
o ering direct connection and
Active Directory with both UK
and international numbering
being available.
ere is still a lot of onpremise
PBX market still to go
for but interestingly many early
adopters of hosted telephony
are now starting to come to
the end of their original supply
contracts and are now looking
for new products, services and
signi cantly, new suppliers.”
at brings up the subject of
migration – moving from one
platform to another.
Gradwell says than any move
from Broadsoft to Wave needs
to be simple. “ is is possible
but there is no working model
at present. e big selling point
for Wave will be that new service
and future upgrades can be
enabled within 15 minutes.
e investment by Chiltern
Capital has provided for a
big increase in sta ; we now
have over 20 people in our
development team alone, 24
in sales and marketing and an
overall headcount of over 80
sta . A corporate re-branding is
being scheduled to present more
consistent messaging.”
Gradwell is also shifting
emphasis from direct sales to
channels; currently direct sales
currently accounts for 60% of
revenues. A new channel sales
manager, James Taylor, has been
appointed and resellers account
managers are already in place.
In terms of reseller
recruitment, Gradwell is
targeting Microsoft partners and
3CX solution providers.
Earlier this year Gradwell,
one of the rst providers of
their own SIP trunk service,
was appointed the rst 3CX
Solutions Provider this means
that Gradwell can, for the rst
time, provide an end-to-end
solution which wraps around
3CX’s IP PBX. e Gradwell
and 3CX joint channel
communities can now provide
an easy to deploy and easy to
use, out-of-the box VoIP solution
to their customers – a muchimproved
value proposition for
both.
“Having established ourselves
as one of the rst 3CX SIP
certi ed trunk providers, this
value-add agreement takes our
relationship with 3CX to the
next level,” says Gradwell. “It
will also provide a very attractive
proposition for existing 3CX
resellers as they choose the
distributor that will deliver the
most business bene ts for their
customers.”
ED SAYS…
This is a very competitive and crowded market where differentiation is frequently only
seen to be achieved by price. Gradwell has a number of factors working in their favour
however – not least of which is their longevity and experience in the hosted telephony
market. The tie up with 3CX opens a wider door for their channel sales through which
the fi rm will now doubt also push their new Wave product and services.
52 | Comms Business Magazine | October 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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