A collaboration with Zoom marks TalkTalk Wholesale Services' shift away from its roots as a primary connectivity business towards becoming a platform-based ICT service provider.
This process will see the company become wholesale-only from 1st of March 2023, with no direct customers and no dealers.
In turn the company is evolving its wider portfolio, according to MD Tom O’Hagan (pictured left): “Traditionally we have had a connectivity heavy offering. Our aim is to move towards being a wholesale platform business providing CCaaS and UCaaS with Zoom and enter the security arena, with all this underpinned by connectivity.”
TalkTalk will offer a suite of Zoom products designed to enhance partners’ communication portfolios.
This will include Zoom Phone, a cloud phone solution for businesses with six million global users, and Zoom Contact Center, an omnichannel solution optimised for video.
The portfolio has AI capability and expands to other value-added services, including whiteboards, webinars, events, and analytics.
O’Hagan adds: “Zoom has demonstrated its commitment to shaping the future of communications and collaboration releasing over 500 new features in the last quarter alone.”
For Zoom, the strategic relationship demonstrates the company’s commitment to expanding the Zoom portfolio to the UK Channel.
Dion Smith, Head of Channels, EMEA for Zoom (pictured right): “We sent a clear message to the market about 18 months ago that we wanted to become a channel first organisation and forming a strategic partnership with TalkTalk Wholesale Services is a perfect catalyst towards this target.
“Leveraging its significant present in its own MSP and CSP ecosystem enables us to bring the unified communications experience that we are building to the UK Channel.”
For Zoom, this partnership is also an opportunity to shake off the market view that it is a meeting- only product. Dion adds: “We have diversified over the last 10 years to have an all-encompassing unified communications platform.
“It is great to tap into an ecosystem of partners that have the ability to sell those products individually or as a platform driving full end to end collaboration.”
All Zoom solutions will be consumable via 1Portal, TalkTalk’s customer interface, and its suite of APIs.
The platform can be managed centrally through the Zoom Administrator Portal and Dashboard, allowing for easy installation and deployment.