“TeleWare is the UK’s largest independent telephony software provider and we have managed to win major contracts with some very high profile customers based on our strong technology, hardware vendor neutrality and the ability to deliver individually tailored solutions and support. We have built relationships that have spanned more than a decade with some of our FTSE 100 customers” explains Geoffrey R Haworth, TeleWare Founder & Chairman. “These key accounts and other large organisations will continue to be serviced directly by TeleWare but, as VoIP becomes the de facto standard for telecommunications across businesses of all sizes, we have been following a strategy to expand our business to be able to deliver a more appropriate telephony solution to medium-sized and SME customers through both hosting and appropriate local partners.”
Haworth continues, “Over the last 18 months, TeleWare has expanded its channel to include hand picked solution delivery partners, but simply having product resellers is not our goal. Many of these partners have a strong telephony background and they receive formal application training, as well as developing skills from working alongside our qualified and experienced project teams, to enable them to implement solutions within customer premises that will deliver real business benefits quickly and with a minimum of disruption to customers. Our channel partners are not simply box shifters as that is not what the market needs today.”
“Our channel, service providers and large enterprise customers are also benefiting from continual evolution of our products, including the introduction of the intelligent Software Development Kit (iSDK). With all our products, we are adhering to industry standards which allows us to engage with customers on any hardware platform. This removes restrictions on our partners and offers them simple to sell packaged solutions offering business benefits to the end user.
“We already supply telephony application solutions to 23% of the FTSE 100 and, for our business to keep growing, we need to address the increasingly VoIP savvy SME market. We believe that hosted telephony services provide the best option for much of this market and, although it is not a commonly known fact, TeleWare already provides the core technology platform for the pioneering BT Featurenet offering which has been delivering advanced telephony features such as Voicemail and Business Messaging in a hosted environment for over 8 years to 58 companies and over 22,500 end users.”
“The core technology which we use to provide hosted services to the BT Featurenet customers is no different to applications that our corporate customers use. To grow our business, we have the experience and technology to deliver this as a service which we are now offering through TeleWare Hosted Services to either service provider partners, resellers or directly to enterprise customers.”
“Because our hosted business is growing, we have signed formal agreements with Global Crossing and Interoute Communications which provides access to a point of presence and delivery network that spans Western Europe, including key capital and major cities. The scope of these agreements mean that technical staff are available to either implement or support throughout Europe at a local level, depending on the requirement of the customer.”
“On a day-to-day level, we are taking tactical steps, like the recent expansion of our training facilities and hiring and training more technical and account management staff to assist our channel as well as senior management to run new operations. Alongside this, our R&D is still developing innovative applications such as an IP Softphone for PDAs, the Lone Worker specialist application and the recently announced NHS solution to reduce ‘Did Not Shows’.
“The strategy to move toward delivering hardware independent, feature rich, telephony application solutions to a wider range of customers is ongoing and will evolve in line with the market, but the steps we have taken over the last 18 months are designed to make our business more profitable and prepare us for the substantial growth we are anticipating in the hosted services area.”
“Over the next 18 months, the plan is to support our channel with new products utilising mobile and IP technology and ongoing training in these new areas. We believe the market accepts that telephony hardware is quickly becoming a commodity item - just like the PC and Enterprise server market. We believe it’s the application and service delivery that will be the real source of competitive edge to the customer and, at TeleWare, we feel we are in a strong position to fill that need.”