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01732 759725 COVER STORY 20 Partnering for success fundamental shift,” he said. “Secondly, instead of having separate IT and telecoms solutions, everything is coming together – telecoms, mobile and IT applications. It doesn’t matter whether you call it convergence or unified communications (UC), what’s important is that the end user understands what it can do for them and can enjoy its benefits.” This opens up huge opportunities for IT and telecoms resellers to increase revenue through cross-selling. At the same time, the size of the market is mushrooming through the democratisation of technology. Whereas even five years ago, only large corporates had the budget, resources and expertise to take advantage of the latest IT and communications solutions, today everything is scalable so that a small business has access to the same tools and technologies as the largest enterprise, without having to commit to massive expenditure or long-term contracts. Growns believes that the people who are going to benefit most from this are resellers, because they have an existing relationship with these end user customers. “Instead of going to a big IT company and a big telecoms company and an applications provider, and spending masses on training and integration, assuming they can afford it!, businesses can now go to their local reseller and get the total solution – connectivity, email, core applications, mobility, telephony, everything they need, all on a 30-day contract that will seamlessly deliver the mobility and flexibility needed in today’s dynamic workplace. It’s really transformational and a genuinely big opportunity,” he said. The Daisy proposition As easy as he makes it sound, Growns admits that this new world of opportunity does present challenges: an IT reseller may be unfamiliar with certain aspects of telecoms technology (and a telecoms reseller with aspects of IT); new technologies, such as SIP, are in their relative infancy with many service providers involved in their delivery, each with its own way of doing things; solutions might contain elements that require different processes; and so on. This, Growns says, is where Daisy can help. “What we aim to do is smooth everything out and make it as easy, as simple and as transparent as possible for our reseller partners – easy to buy and easy to sell. We help them recognise the opportunity and understand technology that they might not be familiar with; and we give them what we believe are the best products, at the best price, with the best support, including training.” The result of this approach is something as simple and streamlined as the Daisy One and Only Convergence Solution. “For resellers, it really is a matter of going onto our portal and saying ‘Right, I want connectivity option A, B or C. I need to have 12 users on my hosted voice system, five of whom will need mobile phones embedded into the cloud voice system so that they can access their applications anywhere and take telephone calls on whatever device is most convenient for them. It is almost a one-stop-shop where they can order the individual component parts of the suite that they need to meet their specific end- user customer’s requirements.” Another big benefit of Daisy’s proposition is that all elements are supplied on the same commercial terms, notably a rolling 30-day contract, and on a truly wholesale basis. This gives resellers the flexibility to brand and package the service in any way they like – as component parts; as the reseller’s own complete solution, bundled with third party solutions from specialist providers e.g. a hotel reservation system, and for any contract length and at a price of their choosing. Successful model Growns says Daisy introduced this model for its mobile business several years ago, as a way of differentiating its offering whilst giving the Channel a mobile proposition truly fit for purpose, and it proved so successful that it now uses it across the board (the only exceptions are Ethernet circuits). “When we launched mobile, everyone was doing the same thing. They were taking standard packages from the mobile network operators and selling contracts on their behalf, essentially acting as In February, Daisy Wholesale, a leading IT, communications and cloud solutions provider to the channel, introduced several new services and launched its One and Only Convergence Solution, a fully integrated product suite designed specifically for channel partners. In addition to its core Hosted Voice and Mobile offerings, Daisy’s suite of best-of-breed solutions now includes broadband with quality of service (essential for VoIP), SIP lines, SD-WAN (for wide area networking), a new Unified Communications app, mobile device management and WiFi services, all optimised to work together, whether implemented as a complete solution or piece by piece in line with a customer’s changing needs. For Daisy Wholesale Sales Director Garry Growns, this suite gives channel partners the tools needed to participate in one of the most exciting periods that he believes the comms and IT industries have ever experienced. “I remember digital telephone systems, early email – BT Telecom Gold – and ISDN. All of those were exciting at the time. But I think that what is happening now is far bigger and more transformational than those changes,” he said. “First, because it involves a fundamental shift in how technology is viewed. Businesses are thinking about how they can apply communications and IT technology to help their business – they are talking about how it can be used and not the technology itself. That’s a What we aim to do is smooth everything out and make it as easy, as simple and as transparent as possible for our reseller partners – easy to buy and easy to sell Daisy Wholesale Sales Director Garry Growns explains to Technology Reseller why there has never been a more exciting time in IT and telecoms and how Daisy can help resellers from all backgrounds make the most of the opportunities presented by convergence. Garry Growns