As the world of communications grows increasingly complex, businesses find themselves in the midst of a balancing act. On the one hand, they need their employees and agents to have access to the latest telecoms technology. On the other hand, they don’t want to spend several months disrupting their teams with complicated provisioning processes.
In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of a concept known as “zero-touch” provisioning. This approach to solution and service management could promise companies an easier way to support and maintain their teams. One of the vendors leading the way in the zero-touch provisioning market is Swoop Datacom.
I got in touch with John Bennett, the CEO and Co-Founder of Swoop Datacom, to learn more about their approach to zero-touch provisioning. He told me all about how current partners can take advantage of the ForgeServe solution to save money and improve experience.
What Does Zero Touch Provisioning Mean to You?
Swoop Datacom has only been in the marketplace for a few years, but they’re already pioneers in the zero-touch deployment market. According to Bennett, the zero-touch provisioning approach is a way to overcome the complexities that used to be involved with deploying an IP phone — in the past, deploying a device used to be a very complicated process. You needed to set up the phone, plug into a redirection service, add details manually and program local switches.
“It was an exhausting and tiresome process. There’s so much configuration required, and a lot of effort in getting a phone set up with the right platform.”
“The idea behind zero-touch provisioning is that you eradicate the worry about what’s going on with the phone. From reseller and service provider perspectives, it’s a somewhat new concept”
Most resellers used to assume that someone would need to manually pre-stage the phone. This meant taking each phone out of the box and provisioning it before it was sent to the customer. Unfortunately, this means that phones are out in the wild that resellers have very little control over. The zero-touch provisioning solution eradicates this worry of “what’s going on with the phone.” As John told me, you get the control and insight you need, along with the simplicity of a faster, more streamlined deployment.
Is There a Demand for Zero-Touch Provisioning
Though zero-touch provisioning is still new to resellers, it’s an exciting idea. “Once you show them a demonstration of how easy it is, they’re blown away.”
It’s not just the simplicity of the zero-touch process that Swoop Datacom resellers love either. Bennett told me that one of the things that make his company stand out is its relationship with vendors. “Our customers want to work with us because our technology is in a multi-vendor estate. We work with 11 vendors now, and they’re all based in the telephony space.”
Swoop Datacom has a vast number of vendors backing them. One key thing for partners is that now, the company can deliver phones in more than 78 countries. What’s more, those phones are provided with provisioning skews wrapped around them. “We’re already delivering products through 15 distribution partners, within our first 3 years of trading.”
How Is Swoop Datacom Taking the Zero-Touch Market by Storm?
Swoop Datacom is genuinely taking the zero-touch provisioning market by storm. There are only two distribution-based competitors in the market with a product that’s capable of delivering some of the services that Swoop can offer. John noted, however, that Swoop has over 60 features that nobody else can currently provide. “We’re also being picked up by global distribution partners, and this year, we think we’ll be working with manufacturers too. This will help us to get into territories that our current partners can’t reach.”
According to Bennett, however, “Zero-touch provisioning is just a gateway into the channel. The features we release aren’t necessarily based on zero-touch provisioning. We also offer about 50 plus wrap-around features that support our clients around zero-touch, like estate management and visibility.”
A key feature of Swoop Datacom’s offering is that they’re able to provide it across a multi-vendor estate. They also have 40 different call control platforms that they can push information in and out of. “When we talk about zero-touch provisioning, we mean that as soon as you put the phone on the desk, all the complicated things happen behind the scenes. The phone connects to our back-end services; you get the fully-managed solution from the services wrapped into our product and more. You can manage millions of phones from one place, no matter who they’ve been deployed by.”
Making Deployment Simple with Swoop Datacom
Every aspect of Swoop Datacom’s zero-touch provisioning solution is designed to make implementing phones easier for today’s companies. From the management skew that means that engineers don’t have to be sent out to sites, and businesses manage their budgets and their time better.
John also told me that Swoop Datacom work to make the zero-touch experience available to every organisation, no matter its background too. “We know that not everyone wants to jump straight into the cloud today. We have a hybrid product, a full cloud-based product, and an on-premises solution. We’re catering to different customers. Cloud is the preference, but we have systems for people from other backgrounds too.”
Since Swoop Datacom was established in 2015, it’s been making considerable ripples in the communications market. As the communication environment continues to evolve, there’s no doubt that more customers will start looking for automated provisioning solutions. It only makes sense to look for as many ways of simplifying the deployment strategy as possible. Swoop Datacom’s zero-touch provisioning will change the way we look at telecoms deployment forever.,
“One of the best things is that it’s so easy to use, too. In half a day, we can train anyone, with any technical competency to use our system”
“We have thousands of template options that you can deploy phones with, and we support virtually any manufacturer. It couldn’t be easier…”
