VAR Nouveau Solutions is aiming to tap into soaring demand for hosted voice and application solutions with the launch of a new hosted unit, Nouveau-NET.
Scheduled to go live in late September, the unit will provide customers with hosted voice, Microsoft applications, CRM and web site services from a data centre in Newbury.
Andy Stevens, director at the Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens and Fortinet partner, told CRN he hoped the unit will be handling 1,000 connections for each service within its first year and will eventually generate half of Nouveau’s total turnover.
“Our goal was always to sell capital solutions, but we are increasingly asked to price things in a hosted environment,” he explained.
Stevens said Nouveau, which has a turnover of £4.5m, had already struck a deal with the Chamber of Commerce, which will use the service for 70 of its staff in six locations.
“If customers do not want capital expenditure and support issues and have multiple locations and lots of remote users, it makes sense to go for a hosted service,” he said.
However, Graham Francis, managing director at VAR Vocale, said: “Everyone is charging into this market. A lot of smaller dealers will try to offer hosted applications and voice and they will fail. Only the strongest and those with good reliability and the right pricing structure will survive.”
Stevens admitted setting up the unit had not been easy. “You can’t start small because it requires a significant outlay. You need 12 servers for just one user,” he explained.
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