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LSI Adds Channel
Manager in the
Southeast
To coincide with network expan-
sion in the southeastern U.S., Line
Systems Inc. announced the addition
of Jace Harris as a channel partner
manager based out of Atlanta.
Harris comes by way of Avaya
and will be responsible for sup-
porting LSI’s existing master agent
relationships in the southeast, most
notably Microcorp (Atlanta, Ga.)
and CNSG (Charlotte, N.C). He will
also be tasked with increasing the
number of active partners in that
area of the country.
“The southeast is without a doubt
our fastest-growing market,” said
Bruce Wirt, LSI vice president of sales
and marketing. “We wanted to put
someone in that market that not only
had experience and a connection to
the master agent community but also
could add tremendous value based on
his existing relationships in conjunc-
tion with our Avaya SIP certification.”
ECG Taps BOOM!
Mobile for Wireless
Expansion
Enhanced Communications
Group has selected BOOM! Mobile
as its brand to expand into the wire-
less space.
ECG is an Oklahoma-based,
independent nationwide provider
of telecommunications services for
personal, residential and small to
medium-sized businesses. Product
offerings include mobile commu-
nications services for voice and
Internet, along with traditional local
and long-distance phone service,
VoIP systems and Web/cloud/data-
based needs, such as Web hosting
and virtual office products.
Now with the addition of BOOM!
Mobile, the company will offer no-
contract wireless plans via all four
national carriers.
cloud, it’s a big change. It’s not a matter of throwing bandwidth at an is-
sue. Companies are now custom-building applications and that’s chang-
ing the nature of their business requirements.”
He added that if latency hits a certain threshold, for instance, every-
thing goes down.
“Customers need diversity,” he said. “Gone are the days of a
single point of failure. You need to think about route characteristics,
carrier diversity and security for the public Internet. You need tailored
network solutions.”
Skyler Stewart, regional vice president at Vonage Business, also
addressed CarrierSales partners at the event, talking up Vonage’s
enterprise chops.
“We have been known as a residential provider, but we’re now edu-
cating everyone that we have 15-plus years in the business market via
strategic acquisitions,” he said. “We actually have 70,000-plus business
accounts, with a six-year average customer tenure. And, we’re adding
8,000 new customers per quarter. What you think you know about Von-
age, well, you will be thoroughly surprised.”
Vonage has made a number of acquisitions since 2013 to expand its
business focus, including Vocalocity, Telesphere, gUnify, SimpleGrid,
iCore and nexmo. In terms of high-profile enterprise clients, it powers
Uber, Snapchat and HAVAS, the media agency behind Dos Equis’ “Most
Interesting Man in the World” and Flo at Progressive Insurance.
“You can go from voice to video in one click, or from desktop to
smartphone,” he told partners. “You get visual voicemail, call recording,
speak-to-dial. We have 130 patents and offer more than 40 advanced
business features. Soon, integrating text and chat into our voice platform
will be a game-changer.”
He also offered some sales advice. “Don’t lead in with voice and VoIP
and phones,” he said. “Lead with an understanding of the customer’s
business and how to make them more efficient. The rest of it then always
comes along. Our most successful partners always leave that technology
conversation for later.”
CarrierSales was named a top partner at Vonage for its 2015 efforts.
According to Murray, Vonage fills a strategic niche in offering robust unified
communications and cloud deployments across its nationwide partner base.
“Vonage is a well-known provider in the hosted communications
space,” he said. “Because of their brand investment, recent acquisitions
and committed focus on the channel, our partners and their customers
are inquiring more than ever about Vonage’s business solutions.”
Earlier this year, CarrierSales also earned top master agent status
with inContact for the second year in a row. It was the top master agency
for the contact center specialist by new sales volume, or new monthly
accrued technology (MAT), for 2015.
Paul Jarman, CEO at inContact, noted during his keynote at the event
that the companies have been partners for 14 years, and that he expects
the opportunities to expand, especially in the realm of contact center as
a service (CCaaS).
“CCaaS will support 12.6 percent of contact center agents in 2016,
representing a $16 billion opportunity,” he told attendees.
(Continued from page 12)
14
Channel
Vision
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September - October, 2016