TelCentris Sees Big Gains In Hosted VoIP

Company:

Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.

Technology Sector: VoIP

Key Product: TelCentris VoxPBX

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: Program just launching

Ideal Channel Partner: Managed service providers

Why You Should Care: To drive immediate partner recruitment for its slate of VoIP services, TelCentris has a number of incentives -- 20 percent commission on sales, for example -- in place through the end of 2009.

The Lowdown: TelCentris in late September unveiled its first channel partner program for agents and dealers interested in reselling its portfolio of VoIP services. Among those are VoxPBX, a hosted virtual PBX telephone system; VoxTrunk, which the company describes as "the virtual equivalent of lines coming in from the phone company or channels on a T1 line" and various data circuits and data plans that TelCentris will customize for customers' VoIP plans.

The company is perhaps best known for VoxOx, a consumer tool that first launched last November as an alternative to popular services like Skype in that it was not only a VoIP tool but also a program that united voice, video, instant messaging, texting, e-mail, fax and social networking tools into a single, free desktop application.

Now, the company is building out its business-to-business product portfolio and looking to expand its management team.

"We have a lot of folks who came from different carriers themselves, as well as from PBX manufacturers, too," said Perry King, senior product manager for business services at TelCentris. "Having a strong agent and dealer channel is paramount to moving forward and growing an organization. We're looking to grow it very significantly over the next six months."

TelCentris has put in place a number of partner incentives to drive recruitment right away. Through the end of the year, TelCentris is offering 20 percent commission on all partner sales, is requiring no revenue commitment minimum for agent and dealer partners and is paying one month of voice monthly reoccurring charge (MRC) to all partners beyond standard commission on three-year deals.

TelCentris is also planning to continue its practice of giving partners 50 percent of collected installation fees.

"We'll look to additional discount levels on an as-needed basis," King said. "We're one of the very few providers that can provide a fully hosted PBX and integrated call center solution -- you can purchase everything from TelCentris without having to piecemeal things. Our customers vary pretty widely but we can focus on small to medium-sized business in a lot of key verticals like real estate, insurance and legal."