Earlier this year, Gamma Communications acquired Pragma, the sole UK distributor of Ericsson-LG Enterprise (ELG); thereby officially adding iPECS, ELG’s flagship UCaaS solution, to their portfolio.
In a recent chat with Gamma, Pragma, and Ericsson-LG Enterprise, we delved into the details of this impressive trio and explored the significance of the new acquisition for resellers, customers, and the UK UCaaS market. With true partnership at the core of their shared vision, there’s plenty to expect.
The Dynamic Trio
So, how did this three-way collaboration come to be? According to Gamma’s Managing Director, Daryl Pile, the primary factor driving it was the people.
“It’s absolutely a marriage, and the chemistry between us was apparent from the get-go,” he notes.
Other than the people, what pleasantly surprised Gamma was the agility and vast breadth of capability that the iPECS solution could offer their channel partners.
“We expected it to complement our Horizon products from Cisco, but it did so much more in terms of features, flexibility, and software integrations,” Pile shares.
Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s Head of Sales and Marketing, Ahed Alkhatib, echoes Pile’s sentiments.
“We’ve been in the market for many years with a legacy proposition and launched our first UCaaS into the UK market in 2016 with Pragma’s support,” Alkhatib says.
“Over the years, we gained traction and transitioned almost completely to a cloud-first proposition.”
While that success was great, Ericsson-LG Enterprise recognized an opportunity to supercharge their UCaaS growth with Gamma, driving it to the next level.
“As Daryl said, we felt that synergistic feel from a people perspective right from the start and understood we could leverage each other’s capabilities,” Alkhatib shares.
Pragma CEO Will Morey adds:
“When we approached this collaboration, our goal was providing growth to all of our partners – not just our resellers, but also Ericsson-LG Enterprise itself,” he explains.
“Our conversation has always been about ways to drive market share for them, and with Gamma, we saw an incredible opportunity to do that faster and better.”
iPECS within the Gamma Ecosystem
So, how is Gamma planning to position the iPECS solution within its existing portfolio?
“We already have Phone Line Plus and Horizon, and iPECS will complement these two products perfectly and provide more capability in the mid-market and enterprise,” Pile shares.
“It sits across a vast proportion of our segment base in terms of the customers and partners that it’s available to, which is an incredible asset,” Pile explains.
Morey stresses the significance of reseller relationships in terms of positioning:
“We heavily position our product into the reseller channel, where people look for a genuine partner to help them drive their business in the UCaaS space forward,” he says.
Specifically, Morey refers to iPECS’ ability to address various market segments – from SME to Enterprise – which can be a major advantage for resellers; as well as Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s robust R&D capabilities.
“The continued innovation that ELG bring to the party is phenomenal, because with cloud, you essentially buy into a vendor, not a one-off product,” he explains.
“It’s not just where the product is today – It’s where it’s going be tomorrow.”
UCaaS Moving Forward
The trio has an exceptionally positive outlook, both for the UCaaS market in general and for iPECS in particular.
“The most prominent trend we’re seeing is continued transitioning from on-prem to cloud, with innovation and disruptiveness being crucial to capturing market share,” Alkhatib says.
And how can we talk about the future of UCaaS without mentioning Artificial Intelligence:
“There’s a slew of things that we’re developing around AI, and I see it as one part of a greater whole of improving productivity end enriching customer experience,” he says.
Morey notes that while AI is all the rage right now, its main value lies in what it can do to empower existing solutions.
“Our focus is on delivering intelligent applications (IA) that learn, adapt, and completely change the experience of using a technology,” he clarifies.
“UCaaS isn’t just about the voice aspect – It’s about making a key technology in your business, such as CRM, 10 times more powerful with summaries, insights, and analytics.”
Road map-wise, talks are in the air about a sidekick product for iPECS, as well as real-time capabilities allowing to move callers between call queues and easily change CLIs.
“Ultimately, we aim for practicality, benefit, and value for our users,” Pile says.
“UCaaS is finally coming to the customer, with bespoke features tailored to the end user,” he concludes. “The value that we can bring to the UK market is there, and we’re extremely excited to see where else we can take this brave new partnership to do it.”
