UNIFIED communications company, Zeacom, has appointed convergence specialist 5i as its first Platinum Services Partner.

5i will act as value-added distributor, spearheading Zeacom’s push into the operator console space – a newly-strategic, niche market recently vacated by Cisco. Peter Howells, MD of 5i explains: “As the initial point of contact for every phone call into a company, the operator lies at the heart of customer service and is partly responsible for an organisation’s public reputation. In light of the difficult economic climate, end-users are increasingly looking to enhance brand loyalty to create competitive advantage, and there is no doubt that Zeacom’s simple-to-deploy Operator Console opens up a fantastic opportunity for the channel. With Cisco’s recent announcement confirming the end-of-life timetable for Cisco Attendant Console (CAC) now is the perfect time for the channel to aid customer's in their current and future attendant console needs.�

In addition, the new partnership will see 5i provide a complete range of channel services to support the Cisco-approved Operator Console and wider Zeacom Communications Centre (ZCC) including interoperability demonstrations, UC design workshops, Cisco UC Manager integration, application deployment and administration, and user training.

Samuel Williams, general manager at Zeacom Europe comments, “5i is an extremely capable and experienced organisation that understand the challenges and benefits of unified communications inside out.  By working hand-in-hand with the channel to open up new opportunities and help convert them into reoccurring revenues, we are confident 5i’s unique partner-only business model will maximise the channel opportunity here in the UK, enabling new customers to take full advantage of a truly integrated UC product suite without disruption or massive financial outlay.�
                                                                                             
The Zeacom Operator Console forms part of ZCC, a single application suite that spans knowledge workers and multimedia contact centre agents. Converging the best elements of Cisco call control and Microsoft messaging infrastructure – and incorporating full Skype and MSN interworking - ZCC delivers a user-intuitive solution for unified voice, mobile and messaging. 

Howells concludes, “Zeacom’s low total cost of ownership proposition is highly compelling, and we believe that our partner base will benefit enormously from the value it will bring to their customer engagements. In short, ZCC means less infrastructure, less complexity and less drain on internal resources and all this enables channel partners to better align with business customer’s objectives in order to rapidly deploy and profit from improved productivity across their organisations.�