Communicado (News - Alert), the provider of the leading management as a service platform for converged and unified communications resellers, is helping unified communications (UC) resellers get the most from UC for their IP telephony customers.

 

In recent months the company has forwarded this initiative – including hosting free webinars and participating in an event hosted this summer by EuroStart Capital Partners LLC, a San Francisco-based venture fund – to better prepare resellers for the evolving market.

 

 The latest event, CTS (News - Alert) 2008, offered the opportunity for the most promising Californian companies to launch and accelerate their business in Europe.

Kerry Shih, founder and chief strategist of Communicado, presented to 200 to 300 CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs from Europe's largest businesses and participate in one-on-one meetings with five of Europe's largest telecommunication firms.

 

"CTS 2008 is an excellent venue for Communicado to meet with potential customers and strategic partners as we continue to penetrate the European marketplace with our converged communications solutions," said Kerry Shih, Founder and Chief Strategist of Communicado. "With our pan-European distribution agreement with Logix Group (News - Alert), a leading e-business infrastructure solutions and services provider, we will continue to gain market acceptance of our Communicado Streamline Management as a Service Platform which helps businesses converge voice and video onto data networks without the associated IT management pain."

 

The webinar identified how reseller organizations can help customers successfully implement UC solutions based on the best practices of early adopters for this technology.

On tap was demonstrating to VARs: The size of the growing demand for unified communications; What they need to know before they begin; IP telephony’s role in cross-vendor implementations of UC; How to manage end-user expectations for a measured roll out; Early examples of successful Microsoft (News - Alert) UC implementations; and Best practices for managing UC post deployment.

 

"Business interest in unified communications was amplified by Microsoft's Fall 2007 announcement of deep integration of UC capabilities into its Microsoft Office suite, supporting real-time collaboration," said Communicado's Shih.

 

While sales and operations professionals might believe that UC is only an MS Office upgrade away, IT managers know implementing UC has higher complexity and risk.

“This disconnect presents value-added resellers who are well versed in IP telephony with a huge opportunity. Beyond helping their IT customers with their UC rollout, they can provide guidance on the tools the customer would need to manage it themselves or manage it for the customer as a service," said Shih.