VQ wants VARs to sell its offering as a service

Videoconferencing vendor will sell only through the channel as it targets more than 10,000 users

A start-up videoconferencing (VC) vendor is hunting for resellers to sell its hosted VC product as a service.

VQ Communications, formed by seven employees from VC VAR Niad Communications, has described its offering as a way of connecting PCs, VC systems and mobile phones, as well as office and home phones, without the expense associated with video, voice and data conferencing.

For a fixed monthly charge per user, VQ’s hosted service delivers integrated video, voice and data conferencing, along with network connection, maintenance and helpdesk support. It is scalable from one to thousands of users, and offers TCP/IP, ISDN and third-generation (3G) capabilities.

Ashley Martin, sales director at VQ Communications, told CRN: “We’ll only sell through the channel. We’d like to work with VARs that have experience in verticals such as health and education.”

VQ wants more than 10,000 users in the next two years. It currently has six resellers signed up in the UK.

“To reach our target of 10,000 worldwide users, we would expect a VAR to sell between 250 and 500 seats a year,” Martin said. “We don’t want thousands of resellers. It would be good if we could get 20 VARs on board in the UK.”

Martin said VQ is not looking just for VC resellers. “We want VARs that recognise the opportunity in building a business on recurring revenue,” he said. “VARs that already offer services are well positioned for our product.”

Andrew Smith, senior associate at audiovisual analyst Sandy Brown, said: “As the price includes support and the opportunity to interface to 3G, I can see VQ achieving its goal of 10,000 users, if it can market effectively and get the resellers behind it with attractive margins.”

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www.channelweb.co.uk/2150159