technologyreseller.co.uk 09 us selectively add a few new vendors into the portfolio as well. TR: What are your priorities in Europe? JC: In the cloud communications market, one size doesn’t fit all. If you look at where we operate in Europe (France, Germany, Benelux), different countries are at different stages of maturity in their migration to cloud. The Netherlands is quite similar to the UK, with a maturity rate of about 58%, but in France and Germany, we see a huge opportunity because the penetration of moving from on-prem to off‑prem is only 20% to 22%. Our priorities are to work with our partners, and maybe some new partners in those countries as well, to really capitalise on those opportunities, whether that’s helping people migrate to Microsoft Teams or to Zoom or to Cisco WebEx and the products and services that go around that. That’s going to be a real priority for us over the next 12 months. TR: Your UK and European operations are actually quite well integrated on the services side, aren’t they? JC: Yes, they are. In 2024, we aggregated our services teams into one services team across the whole of Europe. That means we can, and regularly do, fulfil migration projects and managed services in multiple countries throughout Europe. It also means we have people speaking local languages, which works really well for us. And we have people based in the US, in India and in Australia, giving us a 24/7 capability for managed services. It’s important for me to add that all the services we sell are always through the channel, so our managed services capability is there to enhance the capability of our partner base. TR: Will you be looking to add more partners in 2026? JC: Today, across Europe, for software and services, we serve 500 to 600 partners. Of course, we’ll add breadth into our base, we naturally do that as a distributor, but we have enough partners there already. We just want to do more and more business with them. www.konekt.tech In the case of cloud communications, as an end user I want my telephony system integrated with my CRM system, integrated with my ERP, and then I want some AI on the back of that to be able to give a great experience for our sales people and our customers. That’s quite a complex thing to be able to deliver. Our partners are asking us what they can outsource to us to help them and what recommendations we have as well. TR: Are you under pressure from them to expand your product portfolio? JC: I think we do need to expand our portfolio, but we’ll always stay true to cloud communications. That’s what we do. And it’s quite a wide subject area: it could encompass AI, data processing, data organisation, which might be something for the future, and compliance, most obviously in relation to things like intelligent call recording. So, to answer your question about vendor expansion, yes, we will selectively be adding vendors into our portfolio that we think will enable us to bring real value to our customer base, but we’re never going to be a distributor that has 150 vendors. That’s not what we’re about. We’re about working with some really specialist vendors on that cloud communication solution that we can then take to market for them. TR: What are your priorities for the next 12 months? JC: My priorities are to make sure that we continue to invest in our software and our services business. That’s really important to us. We’re really keen to reduce friction inside our business, especially around things like ordering, so API integrations into our vendors is something we’re pushing hard right now. That’s key. I want to put more people out there to serve our customers, rather than process pieces of paper, so digital enablement is a big priority for us. We’ll continue to expand our services capability. You’ll see us launch a few new services around cloud communications and what we can do to help our partners in those areas, especially in the area of AI. And as I mentioned previously, you will see ideas and then using AI to turn those into a business plan. Soon, we’ll be rolling out Zoom CCaaS to teams internally. That will give customers a fantastic experience when they speak to us because we will have AI sentiment analysis linked into our CRM database. That how we are using AI as end users. If you then look at how we are helping our partners with that. Call it eating your own dog food or drinking your own champagne, we believe we can take those skills and that knowledge to our partner base to help them in their own businesses and with their customers’ businesses. TR: So in this respect, AI gives your partners a reason and an opportunity to upgrade their installed base to more advanced solutions. JC: Absolutely. In the UK today, around 58% to 59% of organisations have already made the move from on-premises to cloud communications, according to Cavell. That makes the UK quite a mature market. Early adopters are now starting on a refresh and renewal cycle and are looking at how they move platform, because their original decision may not have been the right one for them or they may require new capabilities. With our knowledge of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx, to name just three platforms, we can help our resellers help their end users with those platform-to-platform migrations. In 2025, we surpassed 250,000 user migrations, helping partners move customers from on-prem to off-prem and also between platforms. TR: You hold regular partner events and get-togethers. What sort of feedback are partners giving you about the challenges they face? JC: We run roundtable events because we find having small groups prompts better discussions and better debates. I’ve already highlighted the challenges in AI – when do you get involved, because it’s moving so fast? How do you get involved, both in your own business and at a customer level? What are the opportunities? Secondly, the end user is crying out for a simpler experience, but the technology in the background used to deliver that is quite complex, so our partners need a wide variation of skills to be able to deliver that simplicity. This is an edited version of a conversation between Technology Reseller Editor James Goulding and Joel Chimoindes. The recording can be viewed in its entirety at www.technologyreseller.co.uk INTERVIEW
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