AT&T Collaborate, a hosted voice and collaboration offering, is now available via the company's channel partner program. The move comes as many telcos, networking companies and software businesses converge in the hosted voice and unified communications markets.
AT&T Collaborate has three packages that partners can offer to end-customers. They include:
- AT&T Collaborate-Voice: This features a mobile client for each user and Basic and Enhanced voice options.
- AT&T Collaborate-Unified Communications: Featuring additional capabilities like instant messaging; employee presence; desktop sharing for mobile devices, tablets and desktops; and web conferencing.
- AT&T Collaborate-Contact Center: Here, the platform includes agent and supervisor contact center features as well as web client services.
AT&T did not disclose the recurring revenue models available to Alliance Channel members.
Telecom, Cloud Services Market Shifts
The latest AT&T moves come amid sweeping changes in the voice and collaboration markets -- especially as telco agents, VARs and vendors try to monetize more cloud services.
- Key players such as Avaya and ShoreTel essentially are up for sale.
- GoDaddy is striving to finalize its FreedomVoice buyout.
- IT giants like Microsoft (Cloud PBX for Office 365) and Cisco Systems (WebEx) are marching forward.
- And ScanSource is acquiring Intelisys to converge the VAR and telco agent channels.
AT&T also has been evolving, transitioning its own managed IT services business to IBM; building out network functions virtualization (NFV) services; and ramping up the company's IoT and channel partner program efforts.
Amid all those moves and market shifts, AT&T's brand name and reputation for reliability could be key differentiators in the IT channel. But again, we're checking to see what types of recurring revenue and profit margins AT&T Collaborate offers to channel partners. We'll update this article if/when we track down the info.
