FEATURE: CLOUD SOLUTIONS
Gerben Wijbenga, CEO, Gamma
Communications Europe
Benelux, Germany and Spain, using the same model via the partner channel servicing SMEs with communications solutions.
What has been most noticeable is how communications have progressed. We’ re now having conversations about UCaaS with a focus on delivering it to market. We’ ve seen the market change, we’ ve seen the products change, but the key focus for us remains on selling our services through the partner
WE WHOLEHEARTEDLY BELIEVE THAT CLOSE COLLABORATION WITH OUR PARTNERS IS KEY TO SUCCESS.
channel. In the UK, we have a large presence in the enterprise market, selling the same type of services directly to bigger enterprise customers.
Gamma has made some interesting acquisitions recently – can you tell us more about these?
In the last year, we made acquisitions in Germany with ambition to continue the growth we’ ve shown over the last 20 years. There aren’ t many companies who have proven that growth capability over the last couple of years. What we’ ve witnessed is that the developments we saw in the UK are now about to take off in other European markets too.
The German market is really starting to develop in terms of the penetration of cloud services and UCaaS solutions. All the knowledge, expertise and experience we’ ve built up in the UK and later in the Spanish and Benelux markets, we’ re now applying to the German market.
What trends or demands are you seeing among your SME customer base and how does your product portfolio help to provide a better customer experience?
The development of hybrid and remote working became the norm during COVID and has remained a cornerstone of the working world as we know it. This way of working requires specific solutions in terms of communication and collaboration for our SME customers – they need to be able to deliver hybrid working solutions to their employees to enable them to collaborate effectively.
Over the last couple of years, we’ ve been developing a model in which we can deliver these kinds of services to our SME customers via our partner channel, allowing them to offer the best hybrid working environment for their employees.
We must also consider closer collaboration between employees and teams, offering improved ways of sharing information and video calling opportunities, for example.
Why should European customers get on board with cloud technology and what are the benefits of doing so?
Cloud technology came into play around five or six years ago and offers flexibility to our SME and enterprise customers, meaning their services are accessible from every location.
Compared to on-prem solutions, cloud technology is essentially one solution which is continually maintained and kept up to date. The risk of it experiencing downtime is much lower than with on-prem, not to mention cost being much more predictable.
On-prem is a one-off investment, whereas cloud is based on a monthly fee. The visibility and oversight is therefore much clearer in terms of investment. The
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