Objectworld Beefs Up Bundles for SMBs

Quarton said his company has had great success with the UC Server Standard Edition, in its former guise of Call Attendant Office. "It's a huge part of our portfolio.  We deployed it in both SMB and enterprise accounts, and it's been a real differentiation point for us," he said.  

Quarton said the Objectworld bundles give his company another opportunity to approach customers across a variety of industries who haven’t previously been potential communications customers. “By bundling CEBP, Objectworld is creating a way to get to a customer set that we haven't really pursued," he said.  

Currently, Quarton said his company has around 50 customers, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises that Teoma is supporting on the Objectworld products.  He added that his customers run the gamut of industries, including auto manufacturing, suppliers, education, financial services and health care. "It's not really the industry, but the customer need and the type of things that each bundle can help them with," he said.   

Suter said Objectworld recently signed the 100^th VAR to its channel program and is focused on expanding further. Objectworld offers Web-based product training followed by a two-day, in-house lab component for hands-on training, he said.  The company is also close to releasing a best practices guide for channel partners that will include customer checklists, a needs analysis worksheet and other tools, he said. The guide comes with Microsoft Project templates, so the steps that VARs need to deploy a UC system are laid out clearly and easily, Suter said.   

The bundles are compatible with the Microsoft Windows platform, but Quarton doesn't believe that Microsoft's own UC platform will affect his Objectworld sales or turn customers away. "We see it as a complement to our solution," he said, adding that he leverages the Microsoft compatibility with customers. "Objectworld can be layered into the environment to enhance productivity and efficiency," he said.