Steve Harrington, Channel Manager at tIPicall, has been busy compiling a dossier of ambitious strategies in preparation for a five year journey that, on paper, will dismantle long-established industry structures and redefine the channel landscape.
To say that tIPicall has been hard at it over the past 12 months would be to quietly understate the bustle of activity across all corners of the business, not least work done on advancing a growth strategy that if fulfilled will see the company become the pinnacle supplier of telecommunications services by 2018. More pressing however is the advancement of an ambitious plan to secure tIPicall as the second biggest supplier of SIP in the UK by the end of next year. "We believe the timing is right and we have the right product set, people and network to make it happen," stated Harrington resolutely. "During the last 12 months the business has grown more than 80 per cent and we aim to expand at the same rate over the coming year. Initially we were known for our links with Tata and what we can do internationally, but our UK proposition has become much more recognised."
With 100 partners on board it is clear that the tIPicall express train is running at a full head of steam. "As SIP and hosted products are developing so are we," added Harrington. "A few months ago we released a new version of our hosted platform incorporating the latest product set for hosted. Available on tablet, smartphone, soft client and hard phones the feature set is impressive with control passed to the reseller and client so they can manage everything they require."
Aside from ramping up its hosted proposition tIPicall has overhauled its service delivery team and taken on a new head of operations, while expanding its carrier base and network on the SIP side. "We have completed the latest upgrade to our core network which has allowed us to provide more services and connect to more PBX types," commented Harrington. "Next year will be about fine tuning new products and working with key manufacturers on the future of SIP."
tIPicall now interconnects with several large data providers meaning that it can provide quality SIP services to more end users. "These interconnections have made a huge difference to our business," said Harrington. "We were one of the first companies to develop private SIP and the ability to deliver QoS from ADSL to Ethernet is absolutely critical to our, and our partners' success. If we can control the data connection then we can control the voice quality and end user experience. Working with data providers and their partners on delivering private SIP will be the largest growth area for tIPicall. We have already seen significant growth but only scratched the surface."
Despite these big strides the lack of SIP skills in the market remains a challenge, noted Harrington. "From finding the level of engineering staff we need to training partners there has been a steep learning curve for all concerned," he said. "We have been banging the education drum for years and this is an area of development and a key part of what we offer to our partners. If we help educate them they can sell more, support their clients easier and deal with changes in the market. Our API is critical to our next phase of development as it will allow us to provide this comprehensive information to our partners. It will also enable them to interact with us automatically, giving them flexibility and control. Our portal development enables us to be best of breed and our goal is to have the best portal. We are working on that now."
tIPicall has also put its shoulder into driving the popularity of its latest hosted PBX (OnePBX), led by Guy Miller. Plans for new upgrades and a roadmap of feature additions and integrations are already in place. The company is also expanding its core network and will be adding a new data centre in the coming months. "We are also working with some key partners on Lync with our SIP trunks, the technical development of which is complete, so now we are helping them go to market," added Harrington. "The majority of our partners have geared up for SIP and hosted so now it's about helping them to deliver.
"Providing SIP internationally is also a rapidly expanding requirement and we can now offer local breakout throughout Europe which will expand our abilities greatly. Alongside this our international numbering has taken off and will continue to do so. Recently we provided a number in Nicaragua and a number in Belize, it is amazing what can be achieved with global networks these days."
tIPicall's base is equally split between dealers and resellers including many IT sector organisations looking to develop their voice portfolio. "We see this as a key growth sector," added Harrington. "We have also been working with partners such as Nimans to educate their partner base and gain traction. We still need to develop our base of partners but much more strategically and more focused on larger partners with the infrastructure and resources to deliver our products and services, especially in the north where traditionally we have not been so active. Our sponsorship of Margin In Voice and Data this year was a great boost to this strategy and we are working with many of the partners we met at the event."•