Late last month, leading UCaaS and CCaaS solutions provider CallTower and government technology systems integrator Team Consulting, Inc (TCI), announced that they had been awarded a General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule.
For those that have never had the pleasure of working their way through sales to the U.S. government in all its bureaucracy, the GSA Schedule is a government contracting vehicle that will allow CallTower and TCI to sell Microsoft GCC High (among other services) to a wide range of federal, state, and local government buyers — including those under strict regulations requiring high standards for security.
In speaking with TCI’s CEO Bruce Hargrave, he explains to UC Today that the GSA is a major milestone in the journey toward expansive government sales because it provides Acquistion Officers the ability to purchase off of a pre-negotiated GSA contract, skip the time intensive procurement process and jump ahead to buy the products they need.
“The GSA schedule basically is a pre-vetting process and a pre-negotiated contract,” Hargrave explains.
“We work out all of the details for the products and services, giving the government what is called ‘most favorable pricing’ and make it easy for purchasers to save significant time and costs by streamlining the procurement process.”
And this process can be significant. In order for a government contracting officer to buy basically anything, they have to follow the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) with requirements to put out a call for bids to ensure that they are getting the best bang for taxpayers’ buck. While everyone is for fiscal responsibility, this process can be incredibly time consuming.
Alternatively, the contracting officer can simply go to the GSA with its pre-approved contracts and just go shopping for the solutions they need.
This announcement means that having CallTower’s offerings available on the GSA is about to make a lot of folks very happy.
Demand for the Cloud
While known for moving at a slower pace than the commercial market, the government sector has joined the movement towards the cloud to increase speed and efficiency.
After two plus years of rapid change in remote work and communications, there is an expectation for the government sector to catch up and adopt the technologies that will allow them to collaborate more effectively and offer improved services.
“We have seen enormous growth in helping our private sector customers make their transition to the cloud over the past few years of rapid change,” says CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio.
“Our approach has been to work with customers to implement the set of solutions that meet their needs, avoiding a one-size-fits-all mindset that can come from buying directly from a vendor.”
“Receiving this GSA schedule is a major step for us, finally allowing us to make the same great level of service available to government agencies,” he says, explaining that, “We have been enabling voice for government contractors in GCC High for several years and now the government agencies on a local, state or federal level can leverage their Microsoft Azure Government Tenant and do more with their UCaaS and CCaaS environments.”
“CallTower has in demand products with their call center solutions, Microsoft Teams, the GCC High,” says Hargrave, pointing to the fact that CallTower continues to be the sole provider of Microsoft Teams Direct Routing, serving the needs of Department of Defense contractors that require Microsoft’s most secure level of voice connectivity.
A particularly prickly pear, the defense space, both government departments and contractors, face a higher level of certification requirements for the solutions that they use.
These include well known standards like NIST 800-171, the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High among many others.
By combining CallTower’s voice offering for Microsoft GCC High along with TCI’s collection of secure solutions that include options for Cisco, the two companies are able to help their government customers meet their goals for moving to the right mix of cloud services without increasing their risk from a security perspective.
Small Business, Big Opportunities
Along with the new channel for CallTower to sell through the GSA directly to federal customers, this co-selling partnership offers a number of additional opportunities for reaching wider audiences.
For starters, Rubio says that being on the GSA will open up the opportunity to buy CallTower not only to federal purchasers, but state and local governments as well.
Working with TCI, CallTower may be an even more attractive option for these buyers because of TCI’s status in the Small Business Administration (SBA). Hargrave explains that as a HUBZone business, disabled veteran business, and disadvantaged certified business, they qualify as an SBA 8(a) with its designated budget that is set aside for spending on small businesses like his.
My Take
This announcement marks yet another step in what has been a significant year of expansion for CallTower. It follows their recent acquisition of OneStream Networks which not only added to their portfolio of UCaaS solutions (specifically a rich set of Cisco capabilities) but also their distribution network that is going to greatly expand CallTower’s reach to new locations and customer bases.
This latest team up with TCI and being allowed onto the fast track for selling to all levels of government is another big win that will grow their footprint into a previously untapped market.
For CallTower, their growth has been an interesting mix of crossing both vendor and market verticals, which frankly is in line with their MO of finding the right match for customers, and not just the linear one.
Where they go next, probably expanding further on the international front, will be interesting to watch.
