ChannelVision Sept-Oct 2017

icymi Ooma has added capabilities to the Ooma Office phone system to target small businesses, including a combi- nation of analog phone, mobile phone and IP phone solutions available on a pay-as-you-grow basis. The new Ooma Office for Mobile is a cloud-based phone service that allows small business owners to run their business solely from their mobile phones. For small offices with up to 20 employees, Ooma Office with Analog lets users answer calls coming into their Ooma Office number on their analog desk phone and mobile phone. And with the Ooma Linx, users can place phones around their businesses wirelessly. For larger offices with hundreds of employ- ees, Ooma Office with IP Phone Solu- tions offers IP phones so small business customers have the flexibility to choose the phone technology and features that are right for their business. Ooma Office is priced at $19.95 per user per month with no long-term commitments. Fusion has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Cloud and Business Services customers, operations and infrastructure of privately held Birch Communications, which represents the majority of Birch’s current revenues. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2017, subject to customary ap- provals and closing conditions. The combination is expected to cre- ate one of the largest cloud services providers in North America, with more than 150,000 business customers and a 100 percent IP-based network, including 30 data centers, 31,000 fiber route-miles of network and metro fiber assets in 11 major markets. The combined customer base is expected to demonstrate strong fundamentals, with monthly recurring revenue comprising approximately 87 percent of total revenue. The acquisition will not include Birch’s legacy consumer and single-line business customers, which have lower profitability and ARPU, as well as higher churn rates. Matthew Rosen, CEO of Fusion, will serve as CEO of the combined company and will assume the role of Chairman of the Board upon the close of the transac- tion. Rosen believes the scale of this acquisition will further accelerate the company’s single-source cloud strategy. “Customers increasingly demand an end-to-end experience that is reli- able as well as efficient and innova- tive. Fusion is well positioned to pro- vide these services having been first- to-market to pursue this strategy, and can now do so with increased scale and resources,” he said. Telarus is preparing to launch an enhancement to its circuit monitoring of- fering. Partners will have access to a paid monthly service that monitors for outages. Utilizing VXSuite probes on the East and West Coasts, the Telarus net- work operation center will monitor the circuits by testing at regular intervals. In the case of an outage, the team will contact the provider, open a ticket, use best efforts to speed resolution and communicate with appropriate parties progress updates and ticket closure. With an end-user price tag of $20 per month, ticket resolution was creat- ed for agents who want all the advan- tages of selling with VX but don’t want the work of 24/7 response and resolu- tion. Agents will earn $5 in commission per subscription. “Many partners have discovered VXSuite is a sales differentiator, but realize with this comes additional work to provide value to the customer,” the company explained. “One question we have received is, ‘Where will the outage alarms be sent?’ Currently the alarm notifications are sent to either the customer or to the partner. While some partners see this as a great opportunity to serve their customer, others are not prepared to handle these emergencies.” Telarus stressed that this is not a service level agreement. While Te- larus is monitoring and acting quickly in the case of an outage, the carrier will still follow their SLAs, and is re- sponsible for the speed with which the problem is resolved. Masergy Adds Endpoint Detection to Managed Security Masergy recently unveiled its Man- aged Endpoint Detection and Response (MEDR) service, which the company said enables users to move beyond prevention- focused endpoint security solutions that too often fail to catch malware from install- ing on endpoint devices. Although new EDR solutions are ex- tremely valuable tools, they have a reputa- tion for being costly and difficult to use, especially for organizations with limited cyber security expertise and resources. Masergy’s new service helps companies overcome these challenges by integrating leading-edge EDR technology into its Uni- fied Enterprise Security Managed Detec- tion and Response platform, offering these capabilities to customers in an affordable, consumption-based pricing model. With Masergy’s MEDR, network be- havioral alerts are automatically populated with endpoint security data. This provides rich security context via a single “pane-of- glass.” Masergy’s expert security analysts working in its 24/7 global Security Opera- tions Center (SOC) can rapidly assess suspicious endpoint activity patterns on customer networks and initiate the appro- priate response actions. These network traffic patterns can be an indicator that a sophisticated attacker is trying to establish an endpoint “beachhead” from which to attack more valuable assets, such as databases and servers. Ooma Expands Smart Communications to Small Biz Fusion to Acquire Birch’s Cloud, Business Services Telarus Preps Circuit Monitoring Service Channel Vision | September - October, 2017 80