It has been a successful year for Content Guru and its reseller offering, NGware. Now part of the Vodafone product arsenal, the NGware proposition appears set for a further 12 months of strong uptake by the key players in the reseller market.
Content Guru made a splash in the channel last year when it entered the market in partnership with Cable&Wireless Worldwide with its reseller offering, NGware. Since first showcasing the product at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium in July 2012, NGware has continued to generate interest across the market, with some of the channel's key players getting on board. Underpinning the success of Content Guru's platform is the years of technical know-how and experience that the business brings to the table.
Content Guru was founded back in 2005, making it one of the pioneers of the cloud communications revolution. The company was the brainchild of Redwood Technologies directors, Sean and Martin Taylor, who founded the company after realising the early potential for the development of cloud services. The company cut its teeth in cloud with the creation of the revolutionary storm platform in partnership with Cable&Wireless Worldwide, now part of Vodafone, using the platform to service mission-critical processes for some of the UK's best- known blue-chip enterprises.
When it came to creating NGware for the reseller market, Content Guru opted to build the platform from the same mould. The model of the NGware platform mirrors that of its enterprise predecessor on both an organisational and networking level to deliver the same degree of power and flexibility.
"When we began building NGware, we made a conscious decision not to water down any of the functionality that we had developed for our enterprise customers."
John Rees, Content Guru Commercial Director
Embedded in Vodafone's tier 1 network infrastructure, the platform is able to provide its users with massive scale and real blue-chip grade resilience. This enterprise heritage, argues Content Guru Commercial Director, John Rees (pictured), has been fundamental to the success of NGware over the past year.
"When we embarked upon building our proposition for the channel, we were in the unique position of having access to tried-and tested technology and a well-established partnership model," Rees explains.
"Cloud is a learning process and getting it right takes time. Our position as early adopters and our work with storm meant that when we built NGware we already had more than 6 years of experience in delivering cloud-based solutions for a range of flagship enterprise customers, from EDF Energy to National Rail."
"Those years have been invaluable in allowing us to hone and perfect the processes required to effectively deliver and administer cloud-based communications," Rees continues. "Thanks to that formative period, when it came to launching NGware, we were able to refer to this experience and take our proposition to market with real confidence of being able to deliver real high quality solutions."
The enterprise heritage of NGware permeates down to a technological level. The software which drives the platform has been developed by Content Guru sister-company, Redwood Technologies. Founded in 1993, Redwood has twenty years of experience in providing best-in-class solutions for tier one carriers, banks and governments in more than 50 countries worldwide. Content Guru has taken this enterprise grade technology and made it available to its channel partners via the NGware platform.
"When we began building NGware, we made a conscious decision not to water down any of the functionality that we had developed for our enterprise customers," says Rees. "As a consequence, NGware provides resellers with a truly unique proposition. The platform is perhaps the only offering in the market that provides the reseller with access to enterprise-grade inbound, SIP, PBX and contact centre functionality as part of a seamless integrated suite."
This, Rees explains, is part of the company's philosophy for the channel: "We don't believe in simply giving our customers a rigid set of limited features to sell on. That simply leads to a commoditised market and squeezes that margin that our customers can make on what they are selling."
"We believe in working with our customers in a collaborative partnership model. We don't provide a finished product, but rather a powerful set of building blocks. We then work with the partner to help them package the features of the platform in a way that suits them, their strategy and their customers. We even extend the option for customers to white label services and create their own intellectual property. This is all designed to support our customers as much as possible, and help them build their own offerings that will help them really stand out in the marketplace and win, valuable, long-term, sticky relationships."
To find out more about NGware call +44 (0) 1344 852 350 email sales@contentguru.com
