Virtual Office Resource

Switch, the company that brought the world UberConference, today announced Sprint as its first carrier customer. The telco will add Switch’s cloud-based business phone/unified communications offering to its mobile workplace solution.

Sprint has put together an affordable, easy to understand and implement bundle that includes Sprint devices, Google (News - Alert) Apps for Work offerings, an identity-as-a-service offering called PingOne, UberConference, and now the Switch UC solution, notes Switch CEO and founder Craig Walker (News - Alert).

“I think it’s a super differentiated offering,” Walker says of the Sprint bundle.

The Switch solution is an alternative to traditional premises-based business phone solutions, allowing organizations to not only eliminate the on-site switches that power them, but also to avoid investment and support costs related to deskphones (although Switch does provide the ability to support deskphones, and even provides them in some cases).

Walker says that telephony has always been a big bait and switch business, where service providers tend to like to charge for overages, and otherwise nickel and dime their customers. But Switch, he says, is very transparent and open, more of a SaaS (News - Alert) service than a communications service. It offers the all-you-can-eat service for $15 a month, which he says is more affordable than any comparable service in the market.

The Switch solution, which is accessible to smartphone users via apps, presents history on recent communications users have had with the person to whom they are speaking or planning to call. In addition to existing integrations with Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Gmail, the company will introduce additional integrations (look for one with Salesforce CRM) in short order. The Switch offering also enables Sprint to provide customers with a single business number that rings all devices and can seamlessly switch live calls between different endpoints, be they wireline or wireless.

The Switch offering, which has been available since Jan. 14, is now in use by thousands of companies, says Walker, who promotes himself as the man behind Google Voice.

The company is now rolling out Motorola (News - Alert) as its first major enterprise customer. Switch will enable Motorola to eliminate 80 to 90 percent of its deskphones. Employees instead will use Switch from their computers, leveraging new Plantronics (News - Alert) headsets, or via their smartphones. As indicated, Motorola is still keeping some deskphones.

Businesses that elect to continue using deskphones, Walker said, receive SIP credentials from Switch to add those devices as endpoints on the switch. Switch also sells Obihai phones, which Walker says are configurable on its service simply by entering a four-digit pin. The phones from Obihai, whose founders are the individuals behind Komodo Technology that Cisco bought in 2000, also have some other cool capabilities, he adds.