The company’s recent partnership with hosted PBX telephony specialist, SIPCOM, illustrates how Nimans has developed into a fully converged single source solutions supplier – as it urges more resellers to jump aboard the ‘hosted’ bandwagon and abandon any fear factor.
“There’s no going back, hosted is here and now,” said, Head of Networks, Mark Curtis-Wood. “I think hosted has already become established, especially in the enterprise arena - for example with some major banks. There are too many big businesses that have made the shift, for it not to become a major solution going forward. It’s something that all resellers need to be aware of.”
Mark highlighted: “Everything comes back to connectivity. It’s not hosted telephony itself that’s been the challenge in the past, it’s the connectivity that sits behind it. There’s much better technology now. One of the big benefits we are seeing with SIPCOM is that it is both product and codec aligned so is compatible with lots of different devices and technologies. This should be an important consideration for anyone looking at a hosted solution. Better network connectivity and lots of different compression codecs open the door to greater access to other products and end points; which is helping drive demand and cut costs.”
Mark says hosted in general is still at the early adoption stage, although more specialist resellers are emerging. “I think there is still a lot of reseller concern about protecting revenue streams especially from those that traditionally sell boxed solutions. Many worry that if they haven’t got a maintenance contract on a piece of hardware, they will lose out. But what they need to understand is that through an online interface they can still do their adds, moves and user changes which can be charged. The big benefit with hosted is that it can all be done remotely, saving massive travel and labour expenses - opening up your market to anywhere in the country. You can still protect your margins by replacing traditional maintenance contacts and you may only need just one engineer to do it.”
Mark concluded: “Here at Nimans were developed an all-round service proposition so whatever a reseller’s customer requires we can ensure the right solution is always available and delivered – where that is hosted, IP-based or traditional PBX technologies. For me, hosted is a part of the market which is gaining momentum on an almost daily basis.”