BT Joins the Club of UC Elite

By Madhubanti Rudra, TMCnet Contributor

The communication giant, Cisco (News - Alert), launched its Resale Channel Program to build up a network of qualified ad reliable resellers. To become qualified reseller of Cisco’s unified communication solutions, the prospective partners need to undergo a special training. This helps the aspiring partners build up sales, technical and Cisco Lifecycle Services skills. After the training, the aspiring companies are required to go for the validation of their skills through a third-party audit. Cisco offers four levels of resale partner certifications: Select, Premier, Silver and Gold. According to Cisco, these certifications represent an increasing breadth of skills across key technologies and a partner’s ability to deliver integrated networking solutions. BT Global Services (News - Alert) is the latest to qualify for this exclusive Cisco distinction.

BT Global Services, which has a global presence in more than 170 countries, recently announced the obtaining of Cisco Master Unified Communications (News - Alert) Specialization in the United States. This specialization recognizes BT as having fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support highly sophisticated applications-based Cisco unified communications solutions.   

To achieve the Master Unified Communications Specialization, BT had to undergo a rigorous process that began with the attainment of the Advanced Unified Communications Specialization. Next, the company had to meet stringent requirements to demonstrate their master-level sales, technical, and services capabilities. Then, the company had to provide customer references that document Cisco-prescribed design and deployment capabilities, and show evidence that they have the infrastructure to support a full menu of Lifecycle Services offerings and capabilities.

“We are honored to be among the handful of US companies to receive this distinction from Cisco. BT’s commitment to further develop our expertise in unified communications will enable us to continue successfully delivering integrated, multiple unified communications solutions and applications integration in areas such as contact center, unified messaging, rich media, mobility and presence solutions to our MNC customers,” said Michael Boustridge, president of BT Global Services, in a press release.

The Cisco certification clearly put BT in the same bracket with the industry elite.

“To help turn the promise of Unified Communications into a strategic advantage, customers are demanding an enhanced set of skills and capabilities from channel partners. BT’s achievement of the Master Unified Communications Specialization ranks them among the industry’s elite,” noted Richard McLeod, director of unified communications for worldwide channels at Cisco.

(source: http://unified-communications.tmcnet.com/topics/unified-communications/articles/107414-bt-joins-club-uc-elite.htm)