Exertis eyes UC opportunity with voice comms offering

Exertis has identified a significant market opportunity around digital communications and has developed a solution to address that need which resellers can take out to market.

The distributor has announced its Exertis Voice unified communications (UC) platform and is kicking it off with a launch later this month, supported by vendor partner Poly.

With the PTSN switch-off coming in two years, there continues to be a sizeable number of customers that have yet to move to a digital option – and they are now in the Exertis’s sights.

“Two-and-a-half million businesses are still using traditional phone lines, and there’s a huge opportunity for resellers to align themselves with a solution that can help them not only navigate this new approach, but to benefit from it,” said Steve Jobburns, UC&C manager at Exertis Voice.

He added that customers need to review their options, which were likely to be coming under strain with the shift to hybrid working.

“Exertis Voice offers competitive packages that are unlike anything else on the market, with a fully converged solution. The flexible and programmable features that Exertis Voice can provide enables the ideal solution for customers of any size to make their telephony cloud-based. There’s never been a more important time to act,” said Jobburns.

The offering from Exertis provides a range of UC options, including mobile PBX, MS Teams integration, advanced analytics, call recordings with sentiment analysis and transcriptions, call centre features and video conferencing.

The warning drums have started to bang a bit more loudly across the channel around the PTSN switch-off in recent months, but there is some way to go before customers have made the leap to an alternative.

Exertis shared numbers that estimate around 42% of SMEs are still using analogue PSTN and ISDN lines to support their digital solutions.

Others in the industry have also urged the channel to talk more about the switch-off and encourage customers to change tack.

Last month, BT Wholesale carried out research that revealed customers were largely satisfied with their channel partners and were relying on them to guide them through digital transformation changes.

Speaking at the time, Gavin Jones, channel partners director at BT Wholesale, said it was positive to see so many users satisfied with the channel relationships as they were needed now more than ever.

“With the PSTN switch-off fast approaching, it is clear channel partners must work to spark UK businesses’ digital imagination and help them understand how the move to IP can future-proof and unlock new opportunities. It’s the end of the line for PSTN, so if you’re not doing it, a competitor is already trying to,” he said.