PanTerra Networks Develops Early Success With Channel Partners

PanTerra Networks, Inc. provider of unified cloud services for mid-market enterprises, 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 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. SmartBox service helps channel partners be more profitable in a shorter period of time.

Current partners selling the SmartBox service include Converged Network Services Group (CNSG), Dial Communications, Exemplify Group, Inc., Fulton Communications, Inc., 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, 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 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 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 credited whenever customers upgrade their service. In addition, PanTerra syndication content is available; it can be loaded onto a partner’s website with a single line of code. PanTerra’s 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, 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 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 Web meeting collaboration, and by providing consistent high service attributes. By deploying end-to-end management of its cloud services, last-mile bandwidth and associated networking equipment, PanTerra delivers service attributes exceeding industry averages in availability, reliability, security, scalability, QoS, SLA and support. These attributes ensure performance while guaranteeing 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. It 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, PanTerra. “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.“