NEC Corporation (NEC), a leading, financially stable provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications, networking and biometric solutions, is announcing the general availability of NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® CONNECT, a fully integrated unified communications as a service solution (UCaaS), and NEC UNIVERGE BLUE® ENGAGE, a contact centre as a service (CCaaS) solution, in the UK.
Born in the Cloud Partnership
NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE are designed for businesses of all sizes, from enterprise to SMB. Since its launch on 21 April 2020 in the US, feedback is overwhelmingly positive, with thousands of resellers and businesses benefitting from flexible and adaptable solutions that can support the shift to a distributed workforce and hybrid working. The product rollout sees the launch in the UK, other territories across EMEA, Australia and beyond. The strategic partner NEC selected for this significant expansion of its offering is Intermedia Cloud Communications - a US-based ‘born in the cloud’ and award-winning communications software provider.
Differentiation
UK & Ireland Sales Director Andrew Cooper says, “UNIVERGE BLUE offers genuine differentiation. As arguably one of the broadest cloud platforms available, it enables telecoms, collaboration, back up, security, webinars, file sharing and more within a single solution. If purchased from different vendors, all these have their own costs along with the resources to maintain and integrate them. If these are consolidated and streamlined, the cost of ownership is lowered considerably. Businesses can also benefit from monthly billing - users only pay for what they use and user licenses can be altered month by month.”
The launch also presents further benefits for channel partners and Andrew Cooper continues, “On-boarding partners should be empowering, not burdening. Our Partner Program philosophy is ‘We work for you’ with partners getting to maintain control of customer ownership.
UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE are now generally available for NEC's UK Business Channel Partner Community and customers. This announcement represents phase three of a worldwide rollout that will ultimately include partners around the globe by the end of 2021.
With fully integrated conferencing, collaboration, screen sharing and video conferencing capabilities available from desktop or mobile devices, UNIVERGE BLUE MEET provides reliable, stress-free meetings from anywhere, at any time.
NEC’s go-to-market strategy will be maintaining the 100% indirect sales channel using selected resellers across the UK as well as Nimans as launching partner distributor - the largest telecommunications distributor in the UK.
Nimans Dealer Sales Director Tom Maxwell explains, “Unlike other cloud telephony solutions, the UNIVERGE BLUE partner program enables resellers to stay close to their customers with greater control of pricing and billing.
There's a real focus on making the initial on-boarding as simple as possible - resellers can choose the partner model they're most comfortable to start with and take it from there.”
Darren Scott-Healey, CEO of Taylor Made Solutions adds, “What sets UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT apart from the competition is the strength of the voice capabilities with over 100-plus telephony features. Building from there, the video conferencing, file sharing and contact centre packages provide an easy path for upgrades. Our customers quickly identify the advantages of more streamlined IT administration and costs by combining their cloud services with us.”
