Expert Blogs

Whether a tech-savvy partner or an end-user business new to the topic, it can be hard to get a clear grasp of exactly what all the FMC options are, and therefore be overwhelmed when making strategic and purchasing decisions.

Centile’s ISTRA platform is a unified communications solution equipped with business telephony, enterprise-grade messaging, and video collaboration functionalities embedded into a single offering. The Europe-based firm produces the underlying technology for a network of partners, service providers, as well as system integrators, who, in turn, deploy ISTRA into their cloud-based data centers. From there, these groups provide innovative UC services to SMBs based on ISTRA’s infrastructure.

While unified communications (UC) is just one element of digital transformation (DX), it is a very important one, because it is the ‘glue’ that enables intuitive and friction-free collaboration both internally and externally. Without that unification, DX can end up being a set of fragmented processes and tools, yet when combined effectively DX and UC have the power to put users at the heart of any situation, with the ability to operate seamlessly across devices, networks and even apps.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that a lot of companies work. Businesses around the world have transformed almost overnight. Even companies that might not have considered the move to cloud in the past now realize that cloud is essential to getting ahead of the competition.   

Given how many millions of workers have been operating from home in recent months, it would be easy to forget the role of mobile in communications. However, as countries emerge from lockdown, and as companies re-evaluate their longer-term communications technologies based on their recent experiences, the scene is well and truly set for ‘work from anywhere’, and mobile has an important part to play in enabling collaboration across teams.

Justin Hamilton-Martin, Director at Centile, spoke to Comms Business about some of the pitfalls partners should be aware of when selling cloud-based telephony into their customer base.