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."
