There are a lot of hosted/cloud based telephony platforms on the market so we asked Darren Hilton what makes Timico Partners newly launched Synergy service special?
Comms Business Magazine (CBM): Can you give us a rundown of Synergy and how it is enabling your partners to go out and win business?
Darren Hilton (DH): Synergy is not just a cloud or hosted phone system it is a unified communications platform. Synergy UC is a fully featured, fully resilient, unified communications cloud-delivered service aimed at both large enterprise organisations and small businesses. It offers full PBX voice functionality combined with collaborative and multimedia applications for desk and mobile users. Core services for Synergy UC are delivered by Genband’s NUViA cloud-based service - and accessed via Timico’s core managed network.
Synergy UC delivers integrated multiple business requirements from a single platform: simple/complex users, fixed, mobile, IP, TDM, voice, multimedia, OTT, FMC, with soft and hard endpoints. In addition handsets can be auto-provisioned with little or no input from the end user. It therefore satisfies the entry point user who wants a simple, cost effective service that is easy to deploy and the enterprise user who wants fully featured and high quality voice with multiple productivity applications at a price point significantly lower than comparable premises based equipment.
Timico have been a partner of Genband since 2005 and we have until now owned and provided Hosted VoIP from our Genband A2 platform, however the new release will be on Genband owned hardware.
CBM: What separates Synergy UC from the pack? Which key features are you most excited about?
DH: We’ve invested heavily into the resiliency of our platform, as we know this is a core concern when operating business critical telephony over a data connection.
Enterprises and major partners demand services delivered from cloud platforms that are always available. A key feature of the Synergy UC product is its resiliency. This is firstly provided by the design of the NUViA platform itself and its underlying connectivity infrastructure and secondly by the Timico core network that enables connectivity between NUViA and the customer’s access network through resilient links.
Another key feature is the Call Grabber which allows a subscriber to move established calls between devices. Call Grabber is designed to simplify the subscriber experience, to grab a call the subscriber has only to enter a pre-established vertical star code or access code, if grabbing from the PSTN or a Mobile Network.
CBM: We understand that amongst other things Timico is offering WebRTC functionality. What will that mean for channel partners?
DH: Many people talk in wonder about the possibilities for WebRTC, but we think the concept is still fairly new to the general public. WebRTC can be practically applied to meet business needs in several areas which resellers can take advantage of, these include:
A useful tool for customer facing businesses – click to call capabilities from their websites, without having to download plugins
Video conferencing without the plugins – save time and money
WebRTC’s value is tied to its ability to expose multi-media communication services without a client. The opportunities will continue to become prevalent and we see this as a key revenue driver for resellers.
CBM: What does 2016 hold for Timico and your partners?
DH: We have built the Timico Partners proposition to specifically make our portfolio of products and services simple to order and support. The investment in our PartnerEye portal and also in a range of support staff, including pre-sales, technical support, provisioning and account management are all crucial to allowing our partners to operate their business the way they want to, whilst having confidence that all the support they need is available to them at any time.
We have strong financial backing and as a group we’re now a 350 strong team, head-quartered in Newark with five other offices across the UK including our channel business, Timico Partners, operating out of Fareham on the south coast. The group turned over £42 million in 2014, which will grow closer to £60m by the end of 2015.