NEWS
Exertis teams with Poly to launch ‘Exertis Voice’ platform
Exertis has launched ‘Exertis Voice’ its new Unified Communications platform, which was unveiled at a launch event on June 22 at the Gherkin in London. Hosted by Exertis Voice and Poly, this event saw speakers presenting on how, together, the two companies can prepare delegates for the telecoms industry’s shift to digital following the PSTN and ISDN switch off in 2025. Presenters included Rik Hubbard (cloud services director, Exertis Cloud), Steve Jobburns (UC&C manager, Exertis Voice), Nick Birtwistle (CEO, Boom), and Geoff Towns (head of enterprise services, Exertis). During these talks, resellers received demos of Exertis Voice and Poly devices and learnt how to find opportunities for them in the market. Currently, 42% of SMEs are still using analogue PSTN and ISDN lines to support their digital solutions. But in 2025, these will be switched off in favour of digital and cloud-based solutions. In today’s ‘working from anywhere’ environment, Exertis Voice solutions and Poly hardware offer multiple benefits and can make the transition from analogue to digital seamless for customers, while helping them differentiate themselves as a trusted partner during this time of change.
Exertis Voice offers a converged, feature- rich product that’s easy to use, scalable between one and thousands of users, and backed up by Exertis-managed services, including a dedicated 24/7 support team. It brings together unified comms, Software as a Service and deep analytics to power businesses of any size, and features mobile PBX, MS Teams integration, advanced analytics, call recordings with sentiment analysis and transcriptions, call centre features, video conferencing and more. “2.5 million businesses are still using traditional phone lines, and there’s a huge opportunity for resellers to align themselves with a solution that can help them not only navigate this new approach, but to benefit from it,” said Steve Jobburns. “Exertis Voice and Poly provide telecoms solutions that enable resellers to help customers succeed in a hybrid work environment, completely stress-free. Exertis Voice offers competitive packages that are unlike anything else on the market, with a fully converged solution. The flexible and programmable features that Exertis Voice can provide enables the ideal solution for customers of any size to make their telephony cloud-based. There’s never been a more important time to act.”
Steve Jobburns UC&C manager
exertis.co.uk
IT resellers gear up for AI revolution
There is growing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a potential revenue stream for IT channel decision makers, a report has found. Sage’s report – Partnering for Success: State of the IT Channel Ecosystem – surveyed 1,700 IT and tech resellers globally and found that AI is among the most in-demand service for respondents. Of those surveyed in the UK, 42% said that AI and automated services is a revenue stream of most interest to customers today – and they anticipate this will remain the case in 18 months’ time. In addition, 29% of UK IT and tech resellers cited AI and automated services as being vital for their own organisation’s growth. As a result, respondents are investing in adding more skills to their workforce, with 49% of UK respondents recruiting employees with skill sets in AI and machine learning. Cybersecurity solutions are also top of the agenda for channel partners. Cybersecurity was listed as vital for their organisation’s
growth and customer pipeline by 30% of UK respondents, followed by data privacy (29%). Hiring plans are being updated to reflect this, with 49% looking to recruit cyber security skills and expertise. Despite these ambitions, current economic conditions are a concern for UK IT vendors, as 49% listed rising inflation, cost of living and the impact of customers’ businesses as the main issue facing their business, followed by the longer-term impact of societal issues (48%), compared to 46% globally. “The research emphasises the need for companies to anticipate customer demands and make purposeful investments that will propel growth and maintain a competitive edge,” said Eduardo Rosini, EVP partners and alliances at Sage. “Central to this transformative journey is the power of AI, particularly generative AI, as a critical accelerator. This wave of AI still requires judgement, experience and guidance, so humans plus technology working together is where we will get great outcomes.”
Eduardo Rosini EVP partners and alliances
sage.com
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