Aastra Telecom South Africa, a leading company in the enterprise communication market, has finalised its sub-Sahara African partner programme for launch as part of an expansion plan into the sub-Saharan region.
“Aastra is well positioned to seize opportunities in the region,” says Hercules Schoombee, Managing Director of Aastra. “The sub-Saharan market contains a broad range of enterprises from small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to large multi-national companies that are in need of enterprise products.”
“With Aastra's wide range of products, we are well positioned to cater for any type of company, from only four extensions up to sophisticated call management solutions that could scale up to 150 000 users," he says.
Aastra also has products to complement hosted IP Centrex solutions and converged solutions such as world-class SIP terminals with unified communications for contact centres.
Gerrie Coetzee, Marketing Director at Aastra, says: “Depending on the nature and size of each partner, we will be able to supply tailored products and solutions to clients. Partners who offer integrated solutions as part of their service delivery will provide support and solutions; partners who specialise as distributors will supply product to the channels; and some partners may do both. Specifically, we are seeing great opportunities within the VOIP, coverged solutions and call centre markets, which is great for the channel as this opens new revenue streams.”
The Aastra partner model will be three tiered: Authorised partners will be assigned to resell and support a limited portfolio offering mainly specialist service to end-customers; advanced partners are midsection; and premium partners will mainly focus on distributing products for Aastra, but could also, dependant on skills and competence, act as specialist partners.
Each partner level will incorporate specific guidelines and deliverables in accordance with their partner level.
“Aastra will supply knowledge to all partners at a sale, pre-sale and technical level, depending on the terms of their specific partner agreement to support their customers and markets effectively and efficiently,” says Coetzee.
“Within EMEA Aastra is the number one enterprise supplier below the sub 100 port segment, and we are keen to expand on this success within the sub-Sahara market, and provide our world quality systems to end-customers,” he says.
Aastra will also start rolling out new features and offerings to its existing installed base, which Aastra acquired from the Ericsson Enterprise Business during 2008.
"We are keen to expand the existing installed base of BusinessPhone, MD110 and MX-One systems with sub-Sahara Africa, and work more direct with partners supporting these products already through sub-Sahara Africa," adds Coetzee.
According to Schoombee, Aastra financials are very strong and the company is keen to assist customers and distributors to migrate to Aastra as a technology partner in these difficult times, where some of its competitors like Nortel are battling to keep their businesses going.
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