by Gary Audin
We read about cloud services from the enterprise perspective. Now NEC has developed their cloud service offering that also focuses on the reseller and their revenue production.
Jay Krauser, Director, UNIVERGE™ Cloud Services, presented NEC’s cloud Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution at the NEC Advantage conference last May. It is one of the friendliest and supportive models I have seen for resellers looking to sell cloud services.
Jay stressed that the cloud service must solve the customer’s pain points by making the service easy to install, extending the customer’s IT staff and bringing new technology to the customer with the click of a button. Jay said that the service must be easy to sell, continue the reseller’s business as it is today while adding a new revenue streams, and leveraging NEC’s capabilities.
The reseller service model offered by NEC:
UNIVERGE Cloud Services UCaaS (http://necam.com/Services/Cloud/doc.cfm?t=CloudUCServices) are offered in three levels:
The NEC reseller revenue sharing model provides multiple ways to create revenue and covers 1 to 5 year agreements. The initial sales generate a commission plus recurring revenue for the reseller. A commission and recurring revenue is also awarded for customer renewals. Additional revenue can be obtained through rentals, add-ons and other fees.
A difference that competing services do not have is the financial support of NEC Financial Services. NEC Financial Services acts as single financial focal point for both the reseller and the customer. NEC will present a single customer bill for rentals, cloud services, and LD charges. NEC will process the single payment for the reseller. This financial arrangement offers:
Another feature I liked was the portal that is available to resellers and developers. Future enhancements will also include a customer portal. The portal is centralized with login-based access rights & controls, 24×7 support, and ticketing System. The portal allows resellers to:
The developers have their own tool kit with an API sandbox, product registration, 3rd party developer registration, and reporting and financial information.
What I found interesting about the NEC cloud services offering is its focus on satisfying the reseller as well as the customer.