Master Agent Featured Articles

In the telecommunications industry, forming a strategic relationship with a company that boasts extensive expertise in improving the overall bottom line, similar to a master agent, is key. That is one of the primary reasons behind the recently formed relationship between Catalyst Telecom and EMC (News - Alert) Corporation. Through the newly inked agreement, Catalyst will begin to promote EMC’s VNX and VNXe storage offerings that are seamlessly integrated with Avaya (News - Alert) IP Office.

Highlighted as the sales unit of ScanSource inc., this alliance between Catalyst and EMC will prove highly beneficial for resellers and master agents alike due to the fact that they can now offer customers a full unified communications platform that comes complete with various storage capabilities.

Customers "have been demanding complementary storage solutions from our sales team," said Mike Ferney, vice president of Merchandising for Catalyst Telecom (News - Alert). Thus, adding VNX and VNXe to Avaya IP Office "makes enterprise-grade storage accessible for small- and medium-sized businesses," added Anton Prenneis, OEM technical evangelist for EMC.

As companies continue to migrate to the cloud and now want a totally virtualized corporate environment at their fingertips, this partnership will help to bring a great quantity of virtualized software applications to markets as well as enhance the storage capacity provided via these products. Master agent Telarus (News - Alert) is one organization that truly understands the benefits of leveraging the cloud, noting that to its clients worldwide technology is the “engine under the hood.” Within its portfolio, the agent powers GeoQuote SMB, GeoQuote Enterprise, GeoSign, GeoScan, its back office CRM platform and a VAR network.

Targeted to small- to medium- sized businesses (SMBs), which just so happens to be the same audience that Avaya IP Office is geared toward, GeoQuote SMB is a solution that Austin Holverson, marketing manager at Telarus refers to as “the orbit for sourcing telecom services,” in an exclusive interview with TMCnet.

Holverson further commented, “You go to other master agents and it can take a couple of days to get a quote back while we cut that time frame down significantly. Since we wrote our own software, our commission rates are extremely accurate and ensure that each transaction is correct. We have been in business for more than 10 years and have never been late on a commission payment, and we pride ourselves on being both ethical and reliable.”