We’re pleased to announce that we’ve partnered with CounterPath  to Offer Enhanced Unified Communications and become Authorised Distributors for Bria – across all platforms – which we will offer to our channels partners on a monthly SAS basis.    

Who is CounterPath?

For those of you that are not familiar with the company, CounterPath is an award-winning, over-the-top (OTT) unified communications provider. It offers UC softphones for smartphones, tablets and PCs, as well as server platform solutions for the following.

• Client management
• Analytics
• Presence and mobility

  CounterPath has been a unified communications leader for more than 10 years and sells and markets its products through channel partners, as well as directly to operators and enterprises where applicable. More than 400 customers globally use CounterPath products, in 60 countries and including some of the world’s largest organisations. CounterPath products are suitable for all industries, including (but not limited to) education, health care, finance and manufacturing.

What is Bria?

Bria is the suite of software solutions offered by CounterPath, and now by PBX Hosting. These allow customers to make VoIP audio and video calls, send IM and manage presence in a simple yet seamless manner, using the software across several compatible operating systems. The Bria suite of products includes:

• Bria UC softphones – desktop, smartphone and tablet clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
• X-Lite – free softphone client.
• Developer tools – softphone SDK and Bria Desktop API.
• Stretto Platform – includes management tools, provisioning, analytics, help desk support, mobility solutions, push notifications, contact discovery, call continuity, subscriber line proxy, messaging and presence solutions, SIP SIMPLE message and presence, SMS over IP and message sync.

 

Bria Software as a Service

Harness the power of the cloud and access the Bria suite with CounterPath’s cloud-hosted Client Configuration Server (CCS) and enjoy the flexibility of the cloud model. This subscription-based service allows you to easily scale up and down, depending on the number of clients that you have, so that you never pay for more than you need. This also means that you receive updates as soon as they become available so that you can ensure that your customers not only enjoy and robust, secure and powerful VoIP service, but they are also constantly protected from software exploits (for Bria/VoIP). The Bria SaaS solution is available through multiple distribution channels such as iTunes, Google Play and BlackBerry App World or you can choose to deploy using direct download links. Channel partners are provided with an easy-to-use, intuitive, system for quick and simple provisioning, maintenance and upgrade. The softphone clients can easily be set up with minimal risk or disruption to the customer and administrators have total control over which features are available. Further benefits include:

• Instant mobility – mobile devices are an integral and important part of every modern business. With Bria, it’s simple to deploy cross-device mobility that works with existing PBX systems.
• Upsell accounts – simply bolt-on to your existing PBX solution in order to offer customers a complete and powerful unified comms solution.
• Limited capital expenditure – there are no expensive set up costs, just a simple monthly subscription service that you can scale as needed.

Market Opportunity

While the UC market is currently still worth much less than traditional telephony, at around $21.1bn, compared to the $1.6 trillion global telephony market, the sector is experiencing strong growth. It’s thought that the UC market will grow at a CAGR of 11% through to 2018, whilst the overall telephony market will see 2% growth. When it comes to SME’s in the UK, it’s taken a little while for UC to gain initial traction and the market can be divided into two main groups, UC 1.0 and UC 2.0. The former, which accounts for 55% of the market means that a company will have some degree of integration between traditional, fixed line telephony and desktop UC. The latter, which accounts for about 21% of the market, have both FMC and desktop UC apps, according to a PwC report. With all of this in mind, there’s plenty of scope for sales to the many SMEs and enterprises that still haven’t fully adopted an integrated unified communications service. The PwC report also found that following deployment, 93% of SME users reported some benefit, including improved collaboration, employee demand and morale. The benefits of collaboration are now well documented and proven to improve productivity and with it, further benefits such as better profits and a higher rate of employee satisfaction.

The Complete Solution

Get in touch to ask about the new services and how they can benefit your customers’ businesses. Unified communications can be used in any industry sector and are especially useful for call centres. Improve uptime and productivity and allow your customers to access even more communication solutions all on one integrated, secure and highly robust platform. Bria SaaS is ideal for offering UC to your new and existing customers whilst growing your own business. As cloud models are subscription based, this allows you to always be in control of your spending and only ever pay for what you’re using, thus reducing costs and maximising profits. At PBX Hosting, we couldn’t be happier than to be partnering with CounterPath, a supplier with proven experience in the UC market, award-winning products and importantly, 99.999% uptime. Interested? Why not give us a call to chat through your options and let us talk you through it.