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O neStream Networks made a strategic leadership announcement in August, naming Andrew Ramos vice president of global channel sales. Ramos brings a wealth of experi- ence to the table in his new role with OneStream, as an industry veteran who has held a variety of sales and channel positions at MCI, Verizon and AboveNet. Ramos also had a success- ful 12-year run at Masergy before joining OneStream, where he focused on channel and alliance partnerships with Cisco and Fortinet. Ramos said he jumped at the opportunity to lead OneStream’s growing channel program when the opportunity presented itself. “This was an attractive opportu- nity,” Ramos explained. “I noticed what OneStream was doing in the marketplace and was impressed by it, and when I heard they were trying to expand their channel sales organiza- tion, I was immediately interested. It was a natural fit because I was working in a similar space that aligned with what OneStream is trying to accomplish.” At OneStream, Ramos will work on growing a channel organization that covers the United States, with international expansion in the next few years. As Ramos explained, OneStream is primarily a channel sales organization, and the company has no plans to embrace a direct model any time soon. “My objective is to follow a channel-first mentality and support enterprises as they continue to go in a cloud direction,” Ramos contin- ued. “We’re really trying to create the best avenues for our channel partners to do business with us, whether they are independent agents, master agents, value-added resellers or OEM partners.” Part of Ramos’s mission is to drive awareness that OneStream has the resources in place to step in and provide reliable and convenient telephony services for enterprises. “As multi-national companies continue to migrate to hosted environ- ments, the importance of having a solid platform with global telephony relationships at the local level is extremely important. Partners have to rely on a company like OneStream to provide this critical infrastructure for their clients.”  Looking ahead to 2021, Ramos is advising partners to evaluate customers’ intentions, and all the various factors at play such as real estate transitions and work-from-home strategies. “OneStream can help with distributed cloud architectures in a variety of ways,” Ramos said. “We’re able to provide solutions to support both remote and office users. We are focused on our core products and SIP infrastructure and enabling different cloud platforms like Cisco UCMC or WebEx Calling, Microsoft Teams or Avaya. OneStream has global infrastructure and the local- ized relationships to provide service in a multitude of countries.” Overall, there are many reasons for partners to be excited about the direction that OneStream’s partner program is moving under Ramos’s leadership, and its partnership with Cisco is a great example of what’s to come. “I think Andy did a great job position- ing OneStream with Cisco,” added OneStream director of marketing Jay Guagliardo. “We were actually one of the first players, from the PSTN stand - point with Cisco, and really the first with a prominent global footprint. We are also actively involved in the buildout for their unified cloud communications platform. These are two huge opportuni- ties and services that we are delivering and marketing going into next year.” According to Guagliardo, partners are in good hands with Ramos and the company is an excellent position heading into 2021. “Looking forward, we’ll be launching a new enablement and communica- tions effort with the channel,” he said. “We are going to be very active from a marketing and customer care stand- point. Andy has brought a wealth of ideas on how to do that. We are very excited about our business moving forward and what 2021 will bring.” o By Gerald Baldino CHANNEL MANAGEMENT OneStream Expands Channel Efforts Under New Channel Chief Andrew Ramos, OneStream VP of global channel sales. 46 CHANNEL VISION | September - October, 2020

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