Following a successful rollout last year in the US, the UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT UCaaS solution and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE CCaaS solution will now aim to provide UK resellers and end customers with a flexible solution suited to the needs of a new post-pandemic hybrid working set-up.
Described by Kieran Dalton, NEC cloud sales partner account manager for the UK & Ireland, as the ‘centrepiece’ of the UNIVERGE BLUE platform, CONNECT is a unified communications suite offering an enterprise level phone system with extensive voice telephony features, presence and file sharing, built-in AI capabilities, video conferencing, team chat and project-based channels.
Offered in addition to this is ENGAGE, an advanced contact centre system with the ability to offer an omni-channel customer experience incorporating voice, web chat, email and social media with added agent tools, historical reporting and real-time live monitoring. Highlighted by NEC as being ‘platform agnostic’, ENGAGE can support functionality of third-party capabilities such as Microsoft Teams or traditional PBX solutions.
NEC’s sales director for the UK & Ireland, Andrew Cooper, said that UNIVERGE BLUE is ‘arguably one of the broadest cloud platforms available’ due to its encompassing of telecoms, collaboration, back-up, security, webinars, file sharing and further capabilities within one single solution.
Consolidating and streamlining these integrated solutions allows for considerably lower cost of ownership, he explained, with flexible usage-based billing also offered as an option.
“Our pitch to our partners is very simple: you control the branding, you control your billing and you control your pricing,” said Cooper during the platform’s launch event. “By doing that, it enables the reseller to retain the value in their business … customer ownership for us is front and centre of what we do.”
The announcement forms part of a global rollout of the solution by the end of 2021, with US-based Intermedia Cloud Communications chosen as strategic partner for the expansion. Distributor Nimans will act as launching partner distributor in the UK, and NEC’s UK channel partner community will have access to the solution from today onwards.