Cisco, Teleware team on VoIP

Bundle should give resellers a slice of voice over IP action.

By Amanda Sachtleben, Auckland | Monday, 20 November 2006
Telecommunications systems providers Teleware and Cisco are offering a new VoIP bundle aimed at small and medium businesses.

UK-headquartered Teleware, which has an Asia Pacific office in New Zealand, says the new offering is a result of a six-month-old technology development partnership between itself and Cisco.

The bundle combines Teleware’s application server and Cisco’s Unified Call Manager Express system. The converged voice and data system is based on Cisco’s integrated services routers, is SIP-based and packaged for 24, 36, 48 or 96 users.

“They [Cisco] were looking at having a bundled product to allow their resellers to target the under-100 extension market. Call Manager Express is a good telephony system but it was a bit light on some of the features businesses wanted,” says Teleware ANZ managing director Mike Blanchard.

He says his company has taken a new step by offering products in a “prepackaged format”, enabling cost reduction and ease of resale.

Cisco country manager Geoff Lawrie says features such as Teleware’s unique personal number and web-based conference bridge have traditionally only been available to enterprise-level customers. He says a simplified user interface is also a key element of the offering.

“The challenge with the [SMB] market has always been that the really sophisticated and valuable features have been beyond the reach in terms of price and you required a high degree of expertise to implement and maintain the system,” says Lawrie. “The elegance of this bundle is the integration and packaging is done and it’s at a pretty attractive price point.”

Express Data is distributing the bundle, and Lawrie says the reseller programme is not restrictive and doesn’t require a high level of certification.