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4G LTE failover can provide seam- less voice or data continuity during an unplanned outage. “[4G LTE] is really exciting, and we’ve had a lot of requests for that,” Portnowitz added. “It’s especially useful if you layer that on top of SD-WAN. With SD-WAN, you can control exactly what fails over, how it fails over, when it fails over and the amount of throughput that you need. That’s the kind of granularity custom- ers are looking for.” Besides introducing 4G LTE and SD-WAN, Star2Star also upgraded its customer service capabilities with its recent launch of StarCenter 3. “We previously offered an inbound contact center, and now we have outbound as well,” Portnowitz said. “StarCenter 3 has all the features any- one would be looking for in a modern contact center. You can deploy it in a hybrid cloud model, and it can be used in addition to a traditional contact cen- ter or business unit — so if you have a company with a sales or marketing de- partment that wants to deploy a certain contact center technology, you could deploy it very easily, and very quickly.” Plus, if the above offerings weren’t impressive enough, Star2Star has sweetened the pot by enhancing its sales enablement capabilities. “We have always offered full con- cierge marketing support,” Portnowitz said. “This year, we added a whole marketing suite that partners can use to access assets such as co-brand- able, multi-touch email, print and digital campaigns, as well as social media posts, SEM, SEO or website content. Anything partners need for marketing, we will provide it for free. We are literally providing thousands of dollars of free marketing support to our partners that they can take ad- vantage of right away.” When you put all of these offer- ings together, what you get is a true one-stop-shop for customer needs. Star2Star is now able to respond imme- diately to any request that a customer may have, meaning partners can take a consultative approach to sales. Instead of pushing a particular solution, it’s pos- sible to listen to what a customer says and then provide a solution that makes the most sense. This approach benefits both the customer and the partner. “Our goal is to be the friendliest and easiest company to do business with in the channel,” Portnowitz ex- plained. “We are 100 percent channel based; we don’t sell anything direct. It’s how we were built. So we are never going to compete against our partners. That’s really the thought process behind everything we do. A lot of companies say they are channel focused, but unless you are consider- ing the partner in every step you take and everything you do, you’re really not. That’s really what separates us from the competition. We are focused on partners 100 percent of time.” That may make things a bit more complicated for Star2Star on the back end, “but that’s what we have set out to do and that’s our goal,” said Portnowitz. o Core Communications Where do you want your circuit? Type your address to find the fiber closest to you. TYPE ADDRESS HERE Mammoth aggregates 60+ fiber networks across the Western US September - October, 2018 | Channel Vision 75