ChannelVision May-June 2017

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The awards honor outstanding
products, services and deployments
across technology categories.
The winners of the 2017 Vision-
ary Spotlight Awards exemplify this
goal, showcasing the communica-
tions industry’s overall innovation,
capacity for future-thinking execu-
tion, and creativity and feature set
differentiation; and offering channel
partners a cornucopia of opportuni-
ties to boost their roles as trusted
providers and business success.
“We couldn’t be more delight-
ed to honor the top innovators and
industry visionaries in the chan-
nel and communications space,”
said Berge Kaprelian, president of
Beka Business Media. “The cali-
ber of the 2017 nominations was
so high that in some categories
there was more than one winner—
which highlights the rapid acceler-
ation of meaningful, cutting-edge
deployments and product/service
design and engineering across
our industry today. We congratu-
late all of the winners.”
Overall Excellence
Awards: Channel Program
of the Year
This year,
and were all honored
with the Channel Program of the
Year award.
The AT&T Partner Exchange
reseller program has 500 solution
providers in its ranks and is now
celebrating four years in existence.
The program focuses on delivering
solutions for the midmarket; and
uniquely, mobility is a big focus of
the program, which has seen rev-
enue from wireless solutions triple
since 2015. Over the past year,
the company has added a focus
on the internet of things (IoT),
with a collection of IoT resources
to help make it easier for solution
providers to navigate the possibili-
ties of IoT with their customers.
“IoT is already connecting
manufacturing equipment, health
monitors, vehicle fleets and much
more to the internet,” said Sue Gal-
vanek, vice president, marketing, pricing and product
solutions, AT&T Partner Exchange. “Last year, AT&T
Partner Exchange launched our IoT platform, AT&T
Control Center, to the channel. We’re building on that
success by bringing the right blend of products, tools
and resources to help solution providers unlock the full
potential of IoT.”
In 2016, AT&T Partner Exchange launched AT&T
NetBond, which lets businesses directly connect to
third-party cloud environments via a virtual private
network (VPN). This adds value to their existing MPLS
environment, gives customers using broadband a better
class of service.
“We need to continue challenging ourselves to
create new and different ways to go to market,” the
company said. “This rapid pace requires all of us to
be innovative, open, flexible, dynamic and collabora-
tive. We’re committed to continuing to help drive so-
lution providers’ growth and look forward to collabo-
rating with them to deliver differentiated solutions for
their customers.”
RingCentral meanwhile was recently named a uni-
fied communications as-a-service (UCaaS) leader by
IHS Markit; its platform empowers today’s mobile and
distributed workforce to be connected anywhere and
on any device through voice, video, team messaging,
collaboration, SMS, conferencing, online meetings, con-
tact center, and fax. Founded in 2011, the RingCentral
Channel Partner Program is a source of innovative pro-
grammatic and operational trends for the industry. Part-
nering with more than 10 master agents (RingCentral
added six major master agents to its program in 2016),
RingCentral partners sell through their designated
master to customers ranging in deal size from one to
thousands. There are currently over 7,000 partners en-
rolled in the program worldwide to encompass the US,
Canada and the UK–a number that increased by 25%
in 2016 alone. Partner sales are supported by channel
managers, subject matter experts, a dedicated partner
support line, a self-serve partner portal and operations
support. No-cost, on-demand certifications, in-person
trainings, events, marketing support and a host of ad-
ditional enablement tools round out some of the ways
partners are enabled for success.
RingCentral’s unique channel harmony structure
meanwhile offers partners full compensation to the
partner and the direct sales team, while providing seg-
ment- and vertical-specialized, subject matter expert
resources to close deals with 50 employees or more.
And finally, Telegration, a master agent and tech
distributor in business for 27 years, offers its Sales
Partner Program, which combines enablement tools and
dedicated support to facilitate the seamless deployment
of complex services from AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum,
Verizon and more.
It offers voice, data networks, VoIP, mobility, cloud
and managed internet services, but the special sauce is
the level of partner support that it offers, including dedi-
cated partner advocates, sales engineers and access to
project management and order fulfillment teams.
“From the initial network solution and design to
the renewal of an account – our team will be there.
We understand that the cycle doesn’t close with the
sale, so we are vigilant about post sale support and
delighting the end user: the customer,” the company
said. “Through our online portal, mobile app, webinars,
events and support teams we have created a compre-
hensive program to plug our partners into network of
continuous learning.”
Beka Business Media and ChannelVision
Magazine have announced the winners
of the 2017 Visionary Spotlight Awards,
which highlight both channel and service
provider innovation in communications.
Showcasing
Innovation
VSA
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