SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 18, 2014) - PanTerra Networks (www.panterranetworks.com), the leading provider of unified cloud services for mid-market enterprises, today announced the company's SmartBox service has developed early success with channel partners. For the first time, the service allows partners to have a lifetime of recurring revenue through viral marketing opportunities. Having sold through the unified communications channel for years, PanTerra Networks recognizes that sales cycles can be long and the opportunity for partners to shorten the sales cycle is limited. Cloud services now provide shorter sales cycles, but have lacked a recurring revenue steam. PanTerra's SmartBox service helps channel partners be more profitable than ever in a shorter period of time. Current partners selling the SmartBox service include Converged Network Services (CNSG), Dial Communications, eXemplify Group, Fulton Communications, Converged Communications, Live Wire and Creative Micro.
"Cloud service vendors are just now figuring out what it takes when it comes to compensating and motivating channel partners," said Kevin Rhone, director for the Channel Practice at ESG. "The IT Channel is eager for a cloud vendor to offer a recurring revenue model on cloud services that makes sense for both them and their customers. A file-sync-and-share service combined with unified communications gives the channel a real opportunity to deliver the perfect collaboration package for customers."
PanTerra's channel-friendly freemium model of SmartBox includes secure sync, share and store technologies with QoS, for a lifetime recurring revenue stream. Using this model, unified communications partners can significantly shorten their sales cycles and upsell new services such as cloud file sharing, sync and storage. Partners can leverage viral marketing by offering the free SmartBox version and then being automatically credited whenever customers upgrade their service. In addition, complete PanTerra syndication content is available; it can be loaded onto a partner's website with a single line of code. PanTerra's fully automated Web store minimizes cost of sales and maximizes selling opportunities. The SmartBox file sync, share and store service can be installed without any hardware, software or telecom provisioning and overlays customer's existing telecom infrastructure.
"Selling unified communications through the channel naturally means longer sales cycles, as it involves in-depth business adoption," said Tom Deluca, director of sales for Dial Communications. "Having a cloud service like SmartBox available for customers allows us to open the door to a sale immediately and then ease customers into further unified communications, making the entire sales cycle much more painless and profitable. PanTerra's recurring revenue model is a breath of fresh air for the channel and should increase the benefits of selling cloud solutions for resellers."
SmartBox significantly improves upon the store, share and sync features that have been available as separate offerings for several years by building-in unified communications features, such as audio/video calling and conferencing, secure IM, and presence and full Web meeting collaboration, and by providing consistent ultra-high service attributes. By deploying full end-to-end management of its cloud services, last-mile bandwidth and associated networking equipment, PanTerra Networks delivers superior service attributes far exceeding industry averages in availability, reliability, security, scalability, QoS, Service Level Agreement (SLA) and support. These attributes ensure optimal performance while guaranteeing complete IT peace of mind.
With SmartBox, team members can use the online workspace to monitor, view and modify content from anywhere on any device -- all in real time. SmartBox also provides significant TCO savings. Until now, each independent cloud service has required users to pay a minimum monthly fee to offset the provider's overhead costs. Because it combines multiple services into one solution, SmartBox can save a mid-market enterprise with 1,000 users between $65,000 and $100,000 per year.
"Channel partners have been asking for a recurring revenue model for cloud services for years. Current major players in the cloud space won't offer this because of their existing business model," said Arthur Chang, CEO of PanTerra Networks. "Smart viral marketing is making it possible for PanTerra to work with partners to deliver what their customers are asking for, filling a huge void in the channel."
About PanTerra Networks
PanTerra Networks is a unified cloud service provider, delivering WorldSmart, its family of secure, ultra-reliable, future-proof unified cloud services. WorldSmart includes SmartBox, the world's first file sharing service that communicates. It also includes CloudUC, a complete unified communications service that can upgrade and replace an enterprise's existing communications infrastructure with a next-generation cloud-based communications service. With PanTerra's unified cloud service solution, enterprises gain the highest levels of security, scalability, reliability, availability, quality of service, service level agreement and support available while significantly lowering their total cost of operations and IT administration complexities. PanTerra Networks solutions are available through a global network of channel partners. For more information, call us at 1.800.805.0558 or visit www.panterranetworks.com or email us at info@panterranetworks.com
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