Automated Transcript
Mike: Hello everybody, my name is Mike Mills, Business Director for Service Providers at Gamma, and welcome to what is a really big day for us, and welcome to the latest podcast, because I’m really excited to announce the launch of our Global Communication Enablement portfolio, which we’ve launched on the back of the Coolwave acquisition that we did last year. With me today is a long-standing Gamma colleague of mine, Paul Wakefield. Paul, I think for you and I, this is quite a great moment in time because Gamma’s been talking about doing international… crikey, since you joined as Product Manager a long time ago. So, a really big day for all of us. How are you feeling about it?
Paul: Absolutely, a long time coming. I’d say it’s been over a decade we’ve been talking about this, so it’s absolutely fantastic that we’ve got this over the line and we can absolutely say Gamma’s going global. So yeh, a long time coming, really excited, can’t wait to get out into the market.
Mike: Yeh, no, likewise, and I think certainly when we’ve road-tested it with a couple of customers, the core feedback’s been really positive. Can you just talk to me about some of the key messages and what it means for some of our service provider customers?
Paul: Fundamentally, customers have been asking for this. We’ve been talking about going global because our customers have been asking for it. We think we’ve got a really good opportunity. One, because there is a market there — half a billion users globally using business telephony — and we think we can tap into that market. We also think we can do it very well; it fits very well into the Gamma ethos, the Gamma culture, our capability, our service portfolio, and our network capabilities, infrastructure, everything that we do. So, just replicating what we’ve got. So, given the market opportunity, given the capability, given the relationships, and the customers that we’ve got and the demand in the market, it’s a perfect storm that we can absolutely drive into what should be a really exciting time for us.
Mike: I agree. We’ve struggled over the years with some of our bigger customers where they wanted us to do broader territory, and that’s been a challenge from a sales point of view. Equally, the kind of internal excitement has been gathering for a long time, and I know there’s been a lot of work done behind the scenes. Just a question the audience are probably asking themselves, and I touched on it at the start. Where does Coolwave fit into this? Obviously, we acquired them a year ago, so what’s been happening since we acquired them? What have we been doing under the hood?
Paul: Obviously, this was a key strategic move for us. We needed a capability to enable us to go global. We had a few choices within that, acquiring was a logical way to do that, really accelerate and give us the opportunity to maximise success for this market opportunity. Coolwave absolutely gave us that opportunity. They were relatively small but innovative and agile, gave us the extended geographic footprint that we’re looking at, culturally they were a great fit. Gamma is also about the people as well as the capability, so bringing them into the Gamma fold was a logical way to extend this capability. Equally, we brought them in around February. We’re a year on now, just over a year on, and so we’ve been working hard in the background doing integration. When I mean integration, it’s absolutely about the network capabilities, SBCs, data centers, where do they fit, making sure we’re not sort of replicating capability, extending the footprint across, embedding the team into Gamma from a sales, product, and operational perspective, and doing all those integration pieces along, business processes and investing and adding value into that. A key element of that is taking the Coolwave capability as it is, putting a Gamma wrap on it, managed services, and fundamentally about making it easy to consume, which is really about using portals and an API-first approach to make it automated and integrated and very simple to consume. Everyone’s really excited about how we’re all coming together on every level.
Mike: For me, it’s about doing it the right way. One of the things Gamma’s got is a real history and heritage in doing voice the right way. The other part that… we’ve touched on this before but when we say doing it the right way, I think compliance is one of the big themes, and from an organisational perspective we are a little more risk-averse than lots of other people because we’ve got large enterprise clients and very large hyperscalers on our network. What’s your perspective on the approach from a compliance point of view and how do you feel that’s a differentiator against some of the other propositions in the market?
Paul: Compliance is critical. We know that the global regulatory environment is getting more complex. It is complicated. One of the things that Gamma prides itself on is understanding that market, understanding the regulatory environment and being able to advise our customers on the right way to do business, and that means absolutely keeping on the right side of the regulators. So, when we talk about compliance, absolutely doing what we need to do both from an infrastructure perspective, managing numbers, managing supply chains of those numbers to make sure that we can have the highest level of compliance that we possibly can. Some others in the market have different attitudes to risk. Obviously, Gamma is a big, now global business, that means we’re also quite a big target for regulators, so keeping on the right side of that, and it’s not about keeping the right side of the regulators, it’s about doing the right thing and Gamma is all about doing the right thing.
Mike: I’ve actually been involved in some of this work, some of the work we’ve done under the hood to really enable partners to let us take on some of that regulatory burden. We’ve launched the triparty agreement where the software provider and the partner can do all the bits they do with the end user. They can bill the client, they can collect the cash from the client, they can provide a support wrap. They can bill for the software and then Gamma takes care of all the regulatory pieces. That was a great piece of innovation, classic Gamma, right? Let’s innovate with our partner-first approach and get a proposition in market that means they can go sell. We do the heavy lifting on the compliance and they do the best that they’re best at, which is kind of working with their customers to deliver really great software communication solutions.
Paul: Absolutely, it’s the Gamma all over, isn’t it? The raison d’être for us is how do we make services easy to consume, how do we solve problems for our customers, they want to go global, they want to do it in a compliant way and they want to do it with a partner who absolutely understands the regulatory environment, and we’ll drive forward to enable them to deliver the services to their customers. Really good fit, but you’re right, navigating that landscape is tricky and we can be the right partner to help you do it.
Mike: Moving on to the Coolwave name for a second and I know there’s… we’ve sort of had the thing a year now and we’re beginning to transition. Are we still going to be using the Coolwave name?
Paul: Yeh, absolutely. Customers and particularly existing Coolwave customers will not see Coolwave disappear. I think for me, it’s as much about capability then it is about brand. Coolwave has a brand, Gamma obviously has a brand. For me it’s about what problems are we solving for our customers, so it’s about the geographic extension, it’s about the automation, but absolutely Coolwave, it’s not going to disappear. You’re going to see it on your bills and the brand is still going to be there. Equally we will supplement it with Gamma, hopefully across Europe and across the globe to become far more recognised than it is today.
Mike: So where does Global Communication Enablement fit into that Coolwave story and messaging, Paul?
Paul: So, we’ve got a number of existing services. Coolwave have a portfolio services, so Global Communications Enablement, it’s just a portfolio name to bring all of those things to light. So, people will be obviously very familiar around our SIP services. We’ll be able to offer two-way voice, we’ll be able to offer numbering, in terms of virtual numbering, both tollfree DIDs. Equally we will incorporate our messaging services as well, so there will be a whole suite of services that falls under a portfolio, so it isn’t a product. As I said, it’s more about a capability in terms of what we take to market, you will be able to say “can I have that infrastructure please? Can I have that number please? Can I have that capability please?” All wrapped in a nice product and with a managed service if you need it.
Mike: So, you kind of touched on it just then. You’re a product guy. Can you give the audience a bit more specificity on the product propositions and capabilities that will be available and then how they can consume them?
Paul: Let me bring it back as a product guy – what problems am I solving? So, the problems I’m solving is, you’ve got businesses who want voice capability in different territories. Now you can achieve that in different ways. So, for example, if you just want inbound calling, you just need to get traffic into a country, we can do that. If you actually want presence, so you want the capability where you want two-way voice in a country, in a territory again, we’ll be able to sort of wrap that in. Similarly, if you just want messaging, we can do that or combination of all the above. One of the things that we will do is make it as easy to consume as possible. So, for our service provider customers, what do they need to do? They need a mechanism by which they can take products, consume them easily, but also manage them in life very easily, particularly because they’re operating at high volumes. So having the ability to engage with the portal, but specifically being API-first in our approach whereby they consume our products and capabilities integrated within their systems and their business processes, just to make it as simple as easy to consume. Basically offering service, delivering service very quickly. Quick to act and obviously being open and accessible to change, edits, whatever that business needs. So having that accessibility and adaptability, really important to us, and absolutely automation, integration the way to achieve that.
Mike: Great, and then on top of that, we’ve talked about it previously as well, but we’ve got some great capability with Techland out of the EnableX business we acquired about a year ago, about a year and a half ago now I think actually. What does that bring to this mix?
Paul: Yeh, that’s really interesting. So, you know Gamma is, you know we were first into IP, we’re a digital-first company, and Techland absolutely gives us the ability to sell boxes, and not just boxes, but virtualised boxes, need-to-have hardware. But what it does add is just another capability into the portfolio. So, in some instances, you will need that capability if you want an SBC in front of a voice service. If you want to manage hybrid environments, so for example if you’ve got a legacy PBX sat alongside a CCaaS environment, or a CRM system. Typically as well, you know, if you’re using sort of big hyperscaler type platforms, obviously Cisco, Teams, is inevitably going to be a major player in this, then enterprise type deployments, and even sort of managed Direct Routing type services will require SBCs to manage it. So again, having Techland in portfolio now just gives us another string to our bow. So, if you need it, if you need large scale deployments, we can support you with infrastructure. We can support you with enterprise deployments, we can support you in terms of managing specific deployments, specific services with a hardware wrap, with a software wrap, whatever you need. So yeah, really, really interesting sort of addition for us.
Mike: Yeah, and I think the thing that kind of… I think resonates and fits really well with Gamma is obviously ribbon distribute… Techland, sorry, distribute Ribbon SBCs. Gamma has been running these things at scale for 20 years right, so I mean it coincidentally is just a great fit with our capability to wrap and support that, because the SIP networks broadly built on Ribbon technology. So, I think for me, that was a great addition to the portfolio when it came across.
Paul: When you talk to customers, you know, we can sell them a capability, but more than that, we can actually walk the walk, we’ve been doing this for decades. Ribbon are a strategic partner for us. They provide our carrier infrastructure capability, as well as some of our sort of enterprise deployments in some of our other business units. So having that expertise and capability. So, it wasn’t just something that we sort of managed to kind of find just in portfolio. It absolutely fits within sort of our network infrastructure, the way we operate our business in itself, and it’s just an extension of that. So, it’s a very easy sale and support from that perspective.
Mike: Great. This is fantastic, and you know we’ve got loads of good stuff from a product and proposition point of view out there all ready for consumption. How does the kind of technical capability from a portal point of view and an API point of view on the Global Communications Enablement portfolio? How’s it going to affect them?
Paul: So, existing Coolwave customers shouldn’t see any change, simple as that. So, they can still engage with Coolwave in exactly the same way they do now. But what they will have is the addition of a new portal and a new capability to order the services they’ve got and the extended sort of Global Communications Enablement portfolio as well. So, they’ll have more choices in terms of how they consume services. Similarly, with the existing Gamma UK customers, they’re familiar with the Gamma portal, it’s how they sort of order and manage services. We are extending the capability to do that, and what they will see is a new portal with new capability and the ability to consume that in an API-first way if they need it. So, if they want to engage via portal, absolutely they can. Equally, if they want to embed us into their existing systems and their existing business processes, we can do that. Interestingly as well, some of the other… sort of it’s not Global Communications Enablement per se, but some of the other excitement products that we’re bringing to market will equally have a capability. So, things like Phoneline+, which we’ve also launched in the same way, dropping that into your portfolio as a very simple easy to consume, easy to manage, micro UCaaS play follows in exactly that same capability. So, it’s extending that across the sort of Gamma portfolio to drive into that, and fundamentally everything is about being, or using, the reliable robust infrastructure that we are absolutely. How do customers want to do business with us? It is absolutely the Gamma way. You know, we want to be as easy to do business as possible. It’s all about choice and giving the customers the flexibility or the freedom but to consume services and contract in the way they want to deliver, what’s right for them and the way they conduct their business. Absolutely.
Mike: So, all that sounds great. Proposition sounds great. Capability sounds great. Keep me honest, we’ve got a webinar coming out. We’ll have details at the end of the podcast. But that’ll be an opportunity for people to ask questions. We’ll be providing even more detail, we’ll be talking in depth about what those journeys look like. I think there might even be a live demo.
Paul: Absolutely. I’ll be putting my money where my mouth is. I’ll be on the webinar, I’ll be talking about this. We’ll be showing you the sort of detail and absolutely be showing exactly what the capabilities are. So, I’m looking forward to that as well.
Mike: Last question Paul, and this has been really fun. What’s happening for the rest of the year?
Paul: I think two things for us is more countries, giving us the highest compliance capability that we can, and more automation. So, this is not a single dump and run; we are developing portal capability, we are developing API capability, we are extending our geographic footprint, we are solving problems for customers, and it’ll just be more of the same. We’ve got very ambitious plans to be a real global player in this space, because we think Gamma can offer real value to our customers, and do it in a way that’s going to solve those customer problems. So given all the lofty ambitions, expect more of the same.
Mike: That’s been really insightful Paul, and obviously been great to chat. We’ve worked together for a long time, our dreams have come true. Gamma’s now gone global, so for anyone that wants to learn more about it and join the webinar and details on the poll, we’ve got information in the description below. I just want to say thanks to the audience for listening, been a really great show, and look forward to the next one.
