UCN, Inc., a provider of on-demand contact center application services and business telecommunication services delivered over the UCN national VoIP network, announced that Ingram Micro, Inc., the world’s largest technology distributor, has become a distributor of UCN products.
“Being chosen by Ingram Micro’s ISV program as a provider of hosted telephony products sends a clear message that UCN’s on-demand solutions are a viable alternative to customer premises equipment (CPE),” said Kevin Childs, UCN president. “This is a big step forward for UCN and Ingram Micro’s VPN- and IP-focused reseller customers.”
Ingram Micro, based in Santa Ana, Calif., offers a broad array of solutions and services to nearly 165,000 resellers worldwide. The company distributes and markets hundreds of thousands of IT products worldwide from more than 1,400 manufacturers. UCN will focus on a targeted subset of Ingram Micro customers that have VPN, IP and telephony certifications
Ingram Micro’s ISV (independent software vendor) program brings together specialized software developers with value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators (SIs). Together, the software vendors and resellers can draw on Ingram’s extensive roster of suppliers and products to deliver customized solutions to specific client needs.
“Under the ISV program, resellers of UCN-hosted telephony products — such as UCN’s inContact(TM) advanced contact handling solution and its Intelligent- T(TM) dedicated voice product — can generate substantial recurring revenue and complement the VAR’s existing Professional Services revenue model”, said Childs.
“We are pleased to have UCN’s unique set of contact handling applications in our program,” said Justin Crotty, vice president, Channel Marketing, Ingram Micro. “This further broadens our ISV solutions that our resellers can offer and grows their business incrementally. We continue to enhance our ISV program with the end goal of helping our VARs find new business opportunities without increasing their overhead.”
Software partners participate in the ISV program in one of two ways — through a licensing agreement or through a referral agreement. UCN products fall under the referral process, in which products are matched with other appropriate software vendor products to create a more complete solution for the reseller solving end user problems.
UCN product offerings expand the Ingram Micro product portfolio beyond hardware-based phone systems to include on-demand contact handling applications delivered over the UCN Intelligent Network. The UCN inContact product can be configured to support such solutions as disaster recovery, in addition to numerous other custom situations. For example, an end-user could update their credit card information with a phone call when a UCN solution is in place.
Among its many features, inContact can be configured to support a sophisticated skills-based routing application, integrated with a customer database, enabling a call and a screen pop to be automatically delivered to an agent’s desktop. Additionally, the inControl(TM) programming tool supports custom application development.
