INTERMEDIA | NEC Today

Last month, NEC announced the launch of the new generation of our UNIVERGE BLUE™ cloud communications portfolio.

Today, I am extremely excited to share that UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE are now generally available for NEC’s U.S. Business Channel Partner Community. This is phase 1 of a global rollout during 2020 that will ultimately include partners around the globe by 2021.

What is NEC UNIVERGE BLUE™ CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE™ ENGAGE?

Businesses need the ability to communicate and collaborate from anywhere at any time, both internally and externally. They need tools that are easy to deploy and use, and provide users with an integrated experience. The need for a flexible and adaptable solution to support a remote workforce will extend beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic and we built this solution with this in mind.

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE are born-in-the-cloud solutions designed specifically for businesses of all sizes and the channel partners who serve them. Built on innovative and proprietary technology, the solutions are elegant, reliable and easy to deploy, while remaining highly scalable and extremely cost-effective.

Our cloud-based unified communications platform, UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT, combines a full-featured cloud-based phone system, team chat, video conferencing and online meeting plus file backup, sync and share, all available to users through desktop, web and mobile applications. CONNECT helps improve the communications and collaboration of businesses, while being easy for channel partners to sell, install and support.

Our fully featured Cloud Contact Center as a Service solution (CCaaS), UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE, combines robust functionality with carrier-grade reliability and world-class deployment and support services. It’s designed to fit business needs from the small, single channel to the large and sophisticated omni-channel environment, and can help any business differentiate from the competition where it matters most – the customer experience.

Brought to Market Exclusively through NEC’s Business Partner Community

NEC prides itself on its commitment to building strong relationships with our channel partner community and delivering true innovation, and our new generation of UNIVERGE BLUE strengthens this commitment.

Last month, we spoke with industry analyst Elka Popova, Vice President at Frost & Sullivan, about the news. “NEC has the opportunity to accelerate the conversion of its vast and entrenched customer base to cloud services such as UCaaS, CCaaS, meetings, and file sync and share,” said Popova. “The partnership will also greatly improve NEC’s and its dealers’ competitive positions as they will be able to capitalize on the ongoing customer migrations to cloud services. This will result in new revenue opportunities, more predictable revenue streams and stickier customer relationships for NEC and its channel partners.”

Available today through NEC’s Business Partner community, UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE complement NEC’s existing offerings, while creating new opportunities for partners to earn increased revenue through new programs designed to facilitate deeper customer relationships.

NEC Channel Partners can choose between three different go-to-market models:

Customer Ownership
Revenue Share
Agency Model

The Customer Ownership and Revenue Share models are now available for Channel Partners located in the United States, with the Agency Model being available in June. For NEC’s loyal Canadian Channel Partners, a launch date will be announced very soon.

Here’s What Our Partners are Saying

NEC gave a handful of exclusive partners early access to UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE. The partners were able to test the product first-hand and get it in front of select customers. In just the past month, NEC has received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Here’s what they had to say:

“Forerunner Technologies is extremely excited about NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and the NEC/Intermedia relationship. Our clients have a pent-up demand for this dynamic delivery model and the migration to the cloud with advanced collaboration applications. This model is unique in comparison to other UCaaS offerings and allows Solution Integrators better ability to control the end user experience while keeping costs in line. Congratulations to NEC on this move!” – Paul Diesu, CEO of Forerunner Technologies
“We’re excited to take part in the full launch of the new NEC UNIVERGE BLUE! This will be a turning point in the future of NEC UCaaS solutions and sales, and looking forward to presenting the fresh new look to our current customers and new prospects.” – Scott Ellman, Director of Sales, Advanced Communication Solutions
“NEC Blue delivers a complete public, private and hybrid cloud offering to NEC SI Partners. The NEC Blue allows the SI to deliver this offering in an Ownership, Revenue Share or Agency Model. NEC Blue Team provides Inside Sale Support, Marketing and technical support to the SI, allowing the SI to engage in any opportunity. DTC has engaged NEC Blue Team in multiple call center opportunities. NEC Blue can provide a simple to very advance call center solution. A truly SI centric model.” – Gordon Maccani, President, Digital Telecommunication Corp

I couldn’t be more excited for NEC and our partners as we deepen our roots in the UCaaS and CCaaS markets and help our customers transition to the cloud. So come join us, it’s going to be a fun ride! For more information on UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE, visit http://univergeblue.com. Or, if you’re interested in learning more about our Channel Partner Program, reach out to us via the form below.

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We welcome your interest in our products, solutions and services. If you have any questions about the Channel Partner Program, please submit your query below.

This week, I’m extremely excited to share that NEC has entered a global partnership with Intermedia, a leading provider of cloud-based communications solutions.

Together, we are introducing an NEC-branded suite of fully integrated, born-in-the-cloud solutions to help businesses communicate and collaborate from anywhere at any time. It’s the new generation of our UNIVERGE BLUE™ cloud communications portfolio, built on Intermedia’s innovative and proprietary technology and backed by its world-class support.

The way businesses work has changed.

The COVID-19 pandemic will forever change the way businesses think about work. It’s not enough for businesses to accommodate a few remote workers. Businesses now must be flexible and ready to adapt to teleworking at a moment’s notice.

Today, more than ever, businesses need the ability to communicate and collaborate from anywhere at any time, both internally and externally. While recent headlines may highlight a seemingly smooth transition to a remote workforce at global scale, there are still tens of millions of workers who do not have the ability to work remote. This is largely because many businesses are still using on-premises solutions and haven’t found a partner that could help them seamlessly transition to the cloud.

As the current global market share leader in on-premises business phone systems, NEC understands the obstacles that many of these businesses face. We chose Intermedia because their platform offers our customers a seamless integration between premises-based and cloud solutions.

NEC’s commitment to cloud-based communications

Business communications is in our blood. For 120 years, NEC has transformed the way the world works through Information and Communications Technologies. As mentioned before, we are the global market share leader in on-premises business communications systems. In 2015, we launched our Smart Enterprise initiative which is committed to helping businesses meet the demands of today’s digital workforce, and helping customers migrate to the cloud is cornerstone to that initiative.

Businesses have been migrating to the cloud for years now, and the pace at which they are migrating only gets faster. While we had developed and deployed our own Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution in the United States, we came to understand that supporting and expanding this home-grown offering globally at the current rate of market expansion was unrealistic. We needed to align with a born-in-the-cloud provider, like Intermedia, and focus on expansion through our long-established global channel partner network, currently more than 2,000 strong.

We selected Intermedia for many reasons. For starters, our market research, channel partner feedback and customer feedback all conclusively pointed to Intermedia as the trusted market leader in cloud communication services. Additionally, Intermedia’s cloud platform is highly scalable with frictionless deployment options and simple user administrative tools, meaning a frictionless experience for our customers’ employees and better customer experience overall. Intermedia’s platform also provides seamless migration from on-prem to cloud – perfect for NEC’s customer base.

NEC and its global network of channel partners are already going the extra mile for our customers working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. This partnership with Intermedia will allow us to do even more to advance business continuity and allow more workers to work safely from home while increasing their productivity.

Introducing NEC UNIVERGE BLUE™ CONNECT, UNIVERGE BLUE™ ENGAGE

Businesses need tools that are easy to deploy and use, and provide users with an integrated experience. We built the new generation of UNIVERGE BLUE with this in mind.

Built on Intermedia’s innovative and proprietary technology, UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE are born-in-the-cloud solutions designed specifically for businesses of all sizes and the channel partners who serve them. The solutions are elegant, reliable and easy to deploy, while remaining highly scalable and extremely cost-effective.

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT is a cloud-based communications platform for business that combines a full-featured cloud-based phone system, team chat, video conferencing and online meeting and file sync and share, all available to users through desktop, web and mobile applications. It helps improve the communications and collaboration of businesses, while being easy for channel partners to sell, install and support.

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE is a cloud-based contact center designed to fit business needs from the small, single channel to the large and sophisticated omni-channel environment. A fully featured Cloud Contact Center as a Service solution (CCaaS), it combines robust functionality, with carrier-grade reliability, and world-class deployment and support services. NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE helps businesses differentiate from the competition where it matters most – the customer experience.

UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE will be brought to market through NEC’s robust Channel Partner community. For more information on UNIVERGE BLUE CONNECT and ENGAGE, visithttp://univergeblue.com or reach out to us via the form below.

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