RingCentral

Last year, Dave Michels and I set out to identify and profile several hosted VoIP/UC services targeted at small businesses - particularly, under 50 users. I recently revisited this exercise, interviewing and meeting with several of the leading hosted vendors aimed at SMBs. It was not an exhausted study, and only a small handful of the many, many vendors were included. I'll be adding more vendors over the next few months, so please don't be upset with me if your company was omitted.

The UCaaS channel has been full of promise since the launches of Cisco's HCS, Microsoft's Lync, and numerous other vendor and service products in the 2010 timeframe. Although a few partners are scratching a living off of their offers, by virtually all measures the UCaaS channel has underperformed its promise and its expectations. This two-part series will take a look at what the UCaaS channel needs to have to develop a robust ecosystem for growth.

Ingram Micro has made new cloud telecom services available in its collection of 170 solutions which it provides through its cloud marketplace; the purpose of this is to lengthen its deployment and distribution role in order to mark it out as a master cloud aggregator. The extra provisions, which were announced at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, are rooted in the service and support offerings such as voice and data from CenturyLink and Time Warner Cable Business Class.