Comms-care MD on the three areas the firm is betting on for 2020

Mark Forster says channel-only services firm is building capabilities in areas including SD-WAN

Channel services provider Comms-care has placed its bets on three emerging technology areas for 2020 and urged partners to do the same, according to managing director Mark Forster.

The MD (pictured) told CRN that the firm is building out practices for SD-WAN, Microsoft Teams and managed Meraki after seeing a surge in demand from end-users.

He explained that, over recent years, Comms-care has seen the demands from its channel customers change, with more now wanting to drop in whole solutions from Comms-care rather than have it work on one aspect of a wider project.

"We are getting absolutely hammered with demands for solutions," he said. "Five years ago people used to talk to us about an element of a project or a service; we might just be the hands that go and install it or the people who maintain it.

"Whereas now the stuff we are getting real demand is SD-WAN, for example. I know everyone is trying to figure out a platform for it and we can't get enough people in at the moment and they are big, big deals.

"It's not just the partners that you wouldn't expect to build their own capabilities.

"We're talking about the top 10 of the top 100 that just want to drop our SD-WAN solution in because they want to start pushing it out. It's not in the SMB space at the moment, but it will filter down."

Forster said that Comms-care is focusing more on partner enablement than it has done in the past, by helping partners build a business around certain technology - a lot of the time expecting the partner to eventually bring those expertise in-house once they are off the ground.

He said the channel-only firm aims to stay six months ahead of the channel and therefore have a solution ready for when partners want to start pushing it out to end users.

The MD highlighted Microsoft Teams as the second area of focus.

"We're building a complete managed unified comms, managed Microsoft Teams solution at the minute, which is a bit of a new space for us in terms of it being subscription-based and a price-per-user deployment for the kit, the headset and the management," he said.

"It's slightly different, but we're building from a place where we have 12 Microsoft Gold specialisations and we're doing an awful lot with Microsoft already.

"We're already doing this as part of the Ingram brand for the likes of Colt, so it is just building on where we have real strength and visibility."

Forster said that Comms-care typically likes to make its solutions agnostic, meaning different vendors can be switched in and out. He said the firm will likely look towards Cisco Webex Teams once it has built the Microsoft comms capabilities.

The third area he highlighted is managed Meraki, which he said has seen a surge in interest over recent months.

"What Meraki has done particularly well is build a platform which is incredibly easy to use and gives great credibility to the end user," he said.

"They're very good at seeding out; so they stick access points in which is a fairly easy sell, then customers fall in love with the platform and they realise that Meraki does firewalls, and switching, and has an SD-WAN play - so they build it.

"But it still needs management, especially in the SMB space because of the alerts and data, and that's where the Comms-care wrap-around with Meraki is going to be particularly interesting for people."

Forster said that Comms-care won its biggest ever deal earlier this year with Meraki, involving the transition of an end-user from a Motorola estate to a Meraki estate - through a channel partner.

While Comms-care is working to move into new areas, the MD said that channel businesses should make sure they don't move too quickly and inadvertently ignore what they have become renowned for.

"I would say that we are staying incredibly true to what we are loved for now," he added. "I'd recommend to any business within the channel - don't lose sight of what your USP is.

"These are three areas that we are going to be pushing in a big way, but we're still making sure that we're making the right investments for the maintenance business where people know that we are a real safe pair of hands.

"It's a significant part of the business that keeps the lights on, and it will continue to be a huge focus for us."