technologyreseller.co.uk 39 COLLABORATION With our Ericsson LG product, we provide the ability for a reseller to build what we call a virtual ser vice provider, where they take dedicated cloud UCaaS technology and offer that to their customer base session border controllers (SBCs) and direct routing-as-a-service technologies an exciting option for Pragma resellers looking to secure and strengthen IP communications across hybrid and dispersed workforces. “Both SBCs and routing platforms are essential if you’re looking at multi-site, multinational deployments, irrespective of how big or small individual sites are. They answer the question of how you secure voice within a cloud-based environment, especially where you have multi-site, multi-country applications and offices with different requirements at different times of day in terms of bandwidth or where calls need to be generated from or go to,” explains Kevin Baynes, Head of Channels, APAC & EMEA at Ribbon. To help its entire reseller community take advantage of Ribbon’s offering, EnableX has now integrated the Pragma and Techland propositions and is already seeing orders for solutions that bring together different elements from its broader technology offering. “We had one of the first truly integrated sales of our cloud proposition at the end of October. With our Ericsson LG product, we provide the ability for a reseller to build what we call a virtual service provider, where they take dedicated cloud UCaaS technology and offer that to their customer base. This deal was the first one to have a Ribbon SBC embedded into it, enabling the reseller essentially to have an SBC-asa-service proposition as well. They could terminate all their SIP trunks into that and link the Ribbon SBC with our server infrastructure and Ericsson LG.” This is a big step forward for EnableX, as historically there has been little overlap between the Pragma and Techland reseller communities. Indeed, for Morey, this was one of the big attractions of the merger. “We took our reseller customer lists and we overlaid them and said ‘where’s the crossover?’ and there was almost none. Ribbon’s focus has been very much more on the enterprise – mid-market through to enterprise – whereas within Pragma our focus has been much more on SME through to mid-market. Now, we’re seeing Pragma move up and do more in the enterprise space and we’re working on taking Ribbon down into the mid-market space and making sure we’ve got really attractive propositions there.” Ribbon SBCs Ribbon itself has grown through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last 10 years, starting with Sonus Networks’ acquisition of Network Equipment Technologies (NET) in 2012, which added enterprise expertise to Sonus’s focus on service providers like BT, France Telecom and Orange, followed in 2017 by a merger between Sonus and Genband to create Ribbon Communications. Genband also had a significant installed base on the service provider side of the market, but it hadn’t developed cloud technology to the extent that Sonus had. Nor did it have a presence in the enterprise space. The coming together of these two businesses provided an opportunity to upgrade their combined installed base to cloud-based applications and services and to approach both ends of the market through a network of partners across EMEA. Today, Ribbon’s service provider business accounts for about 80% of its annual revenues of $840-$870 million. This includes Ribbon’s IP optical transmission business which provides the big pipes between data centres for critical infrastructure and big service providers and is largely separate from the company’s voice play. Sales to enterprises, financial institutions, insurance companies and other verticals make up the remaining 20%. Techland has been a distributor for Ribbon/Sonos for the last 12 years, specialising in its SBCs and routing platforms. As Ribbon’s only Platinum distributor in EMEA, it is commercially and technically qualified to sell and support the company’s entire portfolio. EnableX is now looking to leverage this relationship by developing an SBC-as-aservice proposition suitable for smaller, agile single-site businesses (as much as multi-site or international ones) that may want to provide Teams or Zoom integration through a Ribbon SBC and Ribbon infrastructure and pay a subscription rather than investing in upfront cost. It is also creating bundles to make life easier for Pragma resellers and help them capitalise on the massive opportunity presented by the take-up of cloud collaboration solutions. “From the outside, even a session border controller can appear quite complex or the preserve of large enterprise customers. We’re working on demystifying the SBC and making it much simpler for a reseller business to engage with. We’re building out simple bundled propositions and saying ‘If you want to enable voice in a Cisco WebEx environment, here is a Ribbon proposition that makes that really, really simple for you’; ‘If you want to look at how you can work with your Avaya or Mitel legacy base of customers and enable them to work better and integrate those technologies into a Teams or a Zoom world, here is a really simple proposition with professional services capability attached to it that your salespeople can sell without having to get into huge levels of complexity’. “We’re building out those propositions quite rapidly so that when a reseller’s customer says ‘I’ve got this established legacy infrastructure that I’ve spent a fortune on; how can I move it into this new world?’ we’re able to offer a very simple package proposition that they can take and then apply a professional services capability and a Ribbon product to it that enables customers to adopt new technologies at their own pace. “It all goes back to that enabler role we play. We can effectively bolt that very, very specialist capability Techland offers onto those 120 Pragma reseller businesses and become a natural extension to their team. When they need that extra bit of support or that understanding of what product would fit where, we can provide it. For Morey, EnableX is the linchpin that ties together the complementary strengths of resellers and vendors, including Ribbon. “You’ve got Ribbon with the R&D capability, the market foresight and the brand to drive into the enterprise. You’ve got the reseller with the local relationships, the feet on the ground, the skill set and that trusted relationship. And what we do is sit between those two and provide that multiplier factor, taking the great skills out of Ribbon and multiplying those into the reseller community to really drive market share and adoption of their technology.” https://enablex.co.uk
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