Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

In today’s competitive environment, partnership has never been more essential to deliver unique solutions, competitive offerings and excellent customer service. Jola has worked with Teltonika to launch a range of affordable, intelligent 4G and 5G routers for the channel. Teltonika routers, supplied by Jola, feature unique capabilities that aren’t available elsewhere, helping partners deliver secure and scalable connectivity solutions.

Jola has been awarded Gold Partner Status by Teltonika, recognising its expertise, technical capability, and continued success delivering innovative IoT and mobile data solutions to the channel.  Teltonika’s Gold Partner status is reserved for top performing partners demonstrating outstanding product knowledge, sales growth, and service delivery.  The partnership enables Jola’s partners to access a range of intelligent 4G & 5G routers with custom firmware, designed to deliver secure, zero touch configuration and seamless integration with Mobile Manager.

This recognition strengthens Jola’s position as a leading aggregator in the channel, combining innovative hardware with intelligent connectivity solutions that are simple to package, sell and manage. Jola continues to help partners find and close opportunities using the MRG™, lead generation programme.

Jola’s CTO, Ben Merrills, commented, “We are delighted to achieve Gold Partner status with Teltonika.  It’s a great reflection of the expertise within our team and the value we offer to partners.  Together, we are helping the channel uncover new opportunities in IoT, M2M and mobile data.”

Demand for reliable VoIP and VoLTE solutions increases as the PSTN switch-off approaches. Many businesses, including lift operators, require a seamless transition to digital connectivity, ensuring security, compliance, and ease of management. They cannot risk installing a solution which will not work in a power cut.

Jola introduces the EV8100, an innovative 4G router with a built-in battery UPS compliant with EN 81-28 safety standard. It is an ideal solution for customers where power continuity is critical. It is designed to deliver high-quality voice and data connectivity with remote monitoring and integrates seamlessly with Jola SIP Overlay or Jola voice SIMs. Robustel’s RCMS management platform has detailed reporting and alerting functionality specifically for this router.

Jola partners can order the routers via Mobile Manager. They will arrive at the required site pre-configured for easy deployment.

Jola’s CMO, Cherie Howlett, commented, “The EV8100 presents a robust, fully featured mobile connectivity solution for customers who need to call when the power is out. Our solution is cost-effective, easy to deploy, highly secure, and compliant with industry standards.”

Jola has launched a community-focused donation initiative to support Broxtowe Youth Homelessness (BYH), a regional charity dedicated to preventing and alleviating youth homelessness across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

The charity delivers crucial assistance to young people aged 16–25 who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of it. Its services include early-intervention support, emergency food parcels and toiletries. For those taking the significant step into their first independent tenancy, the charity provides Home Starter Packs containing essential everyday items such as kitchen equipment, towels and cleaning products.

In support of this mission, Jola employees have organised a collection of non-perishable food items and supplies which can be used within the charity’s Home Starter Packs. The collection was delivered to BYH earlier this week.

Cherie Howlett, CMO, commented “We were pleased to support such a great local charity. This initiative allows us to contribute in a practical, meaningful way to young people who are facing incredibly difficult circumstances locally.”

Meet existing demand

McKinsey was right, and the mobile data market continues to grow. The market has shifted from phones and tablets to smart street lighting, digital signage, and smart payment solutions. First movers are already well-established in this market, selling complex solutions to local authorities, supermarket chains, and transport companies, to name a few. However, the rest of the channel is uniquely positioned to capture the remaining business from both existing and new customers in their areas.

2G and 3G networks are being phased out, PSTN lines are being discontinued, while 4G, 5G and satellite networks are becoming more widely available. The need to save money is driving demand for smart technologies to cut costs and boost efficiencies across the entire market.

It’s easy with the right supplier

Getting into mobile data solutions is as simple as asking the right questions to your customers and partnering with the right suppliers. Jola will help identify opportunities and develop unique solutions that your customers cannot buy elsewhere, all wrapped in your local expertise and support. It’s a winning combination that increases revenue from existing customers, drives growth, and attracts leads from other local companies facing the same challenges that you can uniquely solve.

If you get it right with M2M and IoT, you will quickly generate high-margin recurring revenue and, due to higher EBITDA multiples, increase the value of your company.

Many channel partners are put off by IoT. They don’t see it as a complementary product, believe they need specialist knowledge in-house, and fail to recognise its value. However, with the right supplier, it’s easy. 

Tools you need

With Jola you will have access to our whole team, from CEOs to talk about the value of mobile data and the impact on the value of your business and exit strategy, to dedicated Partner Managers, who can come in and engage your entire sales team.  They’ll provide incentives, lead generation programmes, a technical bid team to come with you to customer meetings, gather the requirements and suggest innovative solutions in the meeting, to final proposals, provisioning and support teams to ensure smooth roll-outs and management in our portals to accurate billing and expert after-care.

Innovation you need

In a commoditised market, you will need a broad range of products to create propositions that are fit for purpose and differentiated, which no one else can offer at a price that works for the customer and a margin that works for you.  Jola provides access to the widest range of solutions without being locked into any single MNO or MVNO. 

Lead generation you need

Jola partners have access to a library of case studies and materials for many scenarios in retail, transport and logistics, security, public sector and broadcasting. We can identify prospects with problems we can uniquely solve and work with you to win them.

The opportunity for the channel is significant. ICT resellers already have strong relationships with business customers for IT infrastructure, asset tracking, digital signage, mobile WiFi, monitoring and utilities. We are seeing huge demand in retail for digital signage and smart kiosks, for CCTV cameras, body cams and payment solutions, ANPR cameras in car parks and tracking devices for lone workers on construction sites.

Mobile data is an easy product to sell and provision and needs very little support. Jola took on just over 150 new partners in 2024 and now has over 1600.

We give partners revolutionary solutions they can’t buy from any other supplier.  We can deliver our solutions on every type of SIM, whether it be a simple consumer plastic SIM, robust industrial SIM, or embedded SIMs to be soldered into devices.  Jola is a pioneer in eSIM technology, providing the ability to activate our solutions instantly online using a QR code or silently deploying eSIMs with no user interaction onto brand new devices, thanks to our integration with all the major enterprise MDM platforms.

Scale

Our partners don’t have to add any more people in billing or accounts to support these deals. SIMs provision immediately using our Mobile Manager platform, so you don’t have to wait to start generating recurring margins. As soon as customers put that SIM into their device, you’re billing for it.

Getting started

Speak to your existing customers, understand their requirements, and then partner with an aggregator that can provide innovative solutions, unavailable elsewhere. Find out about their current projects and challenges. Once you have established your customers’ requirements, start building your solution.  Jola has developed The Mobile-data Revenue Generator. It is a 6-step process to do just this.

Finding talented staff in a competitive market can be tough. Businesses often face a choice: invest heavily in recruitment campaigns or grow their own talent from within. At Jola, we believe the best option is to invest in people early, giving them the skills, experience and opportunities to thrive in the Channel.

That’s why we run a range of initiatives, including work experience placements, apprenticeships, and graduate schemes. Jola are passionate about creating career opportunities for like-minded, bright, entrepreneurial individuals. Over the years, we have trained and supported many young professionals who have gone on to build successful careers with Jola. Noor Ali is the latest example.

Noor joined Jola during her placement year, working within our sales team. During that time, she gained hands-on experience, training, and insight into how Jola supports its partners. After returning to the University of Birmingham to complete her Business degree, Noor re-joined Jola as a full-time Internal Sales Executive, building on the skills she developed during her placement.

“Our placement programme has been a real success,” said Magnus Wright, Jola Head of Sales. “It gives undergraduates valuable industry experience and the chance to develop their skills in a fast-growing technology company. At the same time, we benefit from fresh perspectives, new ideas and a pipeline of talented graduates who already understand our culture and values.”

Noor added “My placement at Jola gave me invaluable experience and confirmed that this was the industry I wanted to build my career in. The support and training I received made it a very easy decision to come back after graduating.”

At Jola, we’re always on the lookout for ambitious individuals to join our growing team. If you’d like to build a career in the channel, please send your CV to careers@jola.co.uk.

Global roaming SIMs can be expensive.  This is because the roaming costs differ between networks.  Some networks, even in the same country, can be five times more expensive than the most cost effective.  Traditionally, the supplier will need to base the selling price on the most expensive network the SIM is allowed to connect to, even though you may never actually connect to that network. 

Jola has addressed these problems by introducing RoamNet Blue PPZ. Partners have access to over 400 global networks. Data consumption on RoamNet PPZ is charged per MB at the zone rates where the data is used, creating a very attractive solution for partners. 

Partners can choose to prioritise coverage over cost or vice versa.

RoamNet Blue SIMs access multiple mobile data networks. Jola partners have a differentiated product to win against the Mobile Networks with good recurring margins and real-time control. 

“We are a channel-only, independently run company within a global market-leading IoT specialist. We create solutions for the channel using existing networks within the group. Jola partners now can bill per zone, ensuring they can win against competitors where the end user is price sensitive.” Adrian Sunderland CEO, Jola.

Skills in demand

You need great salespeople to grow a business. Hiring great salespeople is challenging, as many will be motivated by packages to stay with their current employer. Building your own sales team takes time, dedication, effective processes and mentors.

Key challenges

It’s expensive and time-consuming. Well-briefed agencies can help but are often expensive. Advertising for staff can also be expensive. Filtering CVs, replying, interviewing to get down to one candidate, who may not accept, is time consuming. Leaving it to HR departments can be slow and you run the risk of losing the best candidate.

At Jola, we incentivise employees to advertise roles to people they know through their own networks, which can be less costly and more effective if they come with a recommendation you trust.

Recruiting and retaining talent

Providing an excellent package, an environment for career progression and fulfilment is crucial. 

Training

At Jola, we offer apprenticeship roles where employees can study and learn on the job. They can also advance their careers once they have qualified. In development, we provide certifications from technology companies we partner with, such as AWS. 

During our check-ins with over 1600 partners, we gathered feedback on Mobile Manager, to find out what 10 features are most essential and why. They said:

1 – Ordering SIMs inactivated from every network and holding stock

This allows partners to fulfil customer orders quickly and efficiently. Customers want SIMs on demand and partners want to be able to bill them as soon as they are live.

2 – Activating SIMs

Partners being able to activate SIMs themselves and giving their customers that very same control is crucial. Customers want to know their SIMs have arrived and will be activated when they need them. No one wants to be paying for a SIM, which hasn’t arrived.

3 – Automation

Knowing activations, SIM swaps, bars, tariff changes, bolt-ons and ceases are placed and implemented in real-time, gives partners the control they need to deliver the customer service their end-users expect. Actions need to be instant to maintain trust with customers, which was noted as a common theme.

4 – Back-dateable bolt-ons and pooled data

The ability to save customers money is essential, where usage is unpredictable, and SIMs are not unlimited. The ability to add bolt-ons and reduce overage charges is essential to pro-actively offer the best deals to customers and retain them in competitive markets, partners claimed.

5 – QR Codes

In Mobile Manager you can choose to have a SIM delivered as a scannable QR code for 5G Multinetwork SIMs. QR codes can be activated instantly and simplify roll outs in multiple locations, negating the need for site surveys which save the customers money and was deemed essential.

6 – Location-based-services

Partners have said that they find it incredibly useful to know where each SIM is in the world and can pinpoint the approximate location to tell their customers, when they are not sure!

7 – IMEI locking

The ability to lock SIMs remotely was noted as useful if SIMs have been stolen or are being used in a way the customer is not comfortable with. IMEI locking allows partners to lock a SIM to a physical device, ensuring the SIM can only be used in that device.

8 – Auto-config managed routers

Partners love the ability to send out routers that simply work in digital signage solutions and have peace of mind that their solution is protected from hackers.

9 – Private APN management

For customers who need private networks, the ability to set them up in Mobile Manager was described as a real ‘game-changer’, especially as the Mobile Networks themselves take months to deliver these and our partners can set them up themselves.

10 –Real-time monitoring, reporting and ongoing development

Our partners gave lots of positive feedback on the full control and information they can access to give up to date information to their end users. They love the fact that the portal is heavily invested in and has a full-time development team managing it in the UK. They have the same developers who wrote the first version of the code still involved in portal development ensuring the system is secure, fast and always adding new features.

The founders of Jola have been developing ‘white label’ portals since 2005 in the channel and in our experience, resellers and MSPs want:

• Control. Their customers must see them as the supplier, not an intermediary. They need real-time, automated online tools to provision, manage, bill and support any white-label products.
• Choice. A wide range of options to meet the differing needs of their customers.
• Competitiveness. They need help in identifying opportunities and they must win the deal against the Networks at a reasonable margin.
• Differentiation. They need products and alternatives their customers cannot buy elsewhere.

Jola’s partners access all our white-label mobile data solutions through Mobile Manager. Here they can price and provision solutions themselves in real time. Partners can custom-build their own Private APN networks. Through Mobile Manager we offer thousands of networks worldwide and unique and differentiated solutions to suit every type of mobile data requirement. 

How does it manage overages?

Mobile Manager solves the problem of bill shock from data overages by allowing partners to track usage and add bolt-ons to help eliminate overage charges completely. This is the exact opposite of what the market typically does. Carriers earn super-profits from overage charges and the channel loses customers because of it. We are the first company in the channel to challenge this and put the resellers and their customers first.

Can it support multiple networks?

Yes. For applications where it is critical to have a strong 4G/5G internet connection at all times, businesses are opting for un-steered multi-network roaming SIMs. These SIM cards have no preferred network. We offer a range of multi-network and roaming options.

What about M2M?

There is a wide range of devices that need an internet connection and 4G/5G data SIMs fit the bill. Opportunities are flooding in via partners from multiple sectors such as retail, construction, logistics and the public sector, all with different requirements. Some need Fixed Public IP addresses, others need multi-network SIMs, but all need the ability to monitor and manage usage remotely. Jola developed products for the channel to address this market.

What about hardware?

Mobile data revenues are growing rapidly, with high demand for smart devices, such as digital signage, CCTV and tracking and monitoring. Jola has partners deploying pre-configured, intelligent 4G/5G connectivity projects globally, negating the need for site surveys and manual configuration. Mobile Manager allows our partners to monitor and manage each SIM or device in one easy portal. One of our partners showed us a tender they were working on recently and one of the questions was,

“Do you have your own real-time SIM management portal or are you providing third-party access to the Networks’ portals?”

The project was for thousands of SIMs in physical security devices. 2.5 years into a 36-month term, the incumbent had not been invited to tender. For redundancy, every device had two SIMs, one unlimited and one multi-network. The end user had found having to log on to two completely different websites exasperating. They had different features, and different CDR formats and not all the processes were automated, creating delays, especially out of hours. If that’s the experience of the end user, imagine the frustration of MSPs who want to sell all the networks to multiple end users.

Most suppliers will say they have a self-service portal but if they don’t have their own they are putting their partners at a significant disadvantage. How many of these portals are fully automated? Is data available in real time? Can intelligent devices be ordered and managed on the portal? How many people use the portal on a daily basis? How fast is it?

Jola was the first to launch a mobile data management portal back in 2016. We now have over 1600 partners managing hundreds of thousands of SIMs in smart devices globally. We have spent the last 9 years improving our portal, not just adding new products, hardware and pricing models from all the major networks, but also making the portal as easy to use as possible for as many SIMs as possible without slowing it down. 

What’s new?

LBS (location based services) and IMEI locking, giving partners complete visibility and control over their SIM estates.  These new features allow users to locate deployed devices, protect them from unauthorised use, and manage connectivity in real time.

What about APIs?

Jola’s largest resellers transact almost exclusively using APIs. They want to pull all the functionality from Mobile Manager into their own portals.  We decided right in the beginning that anything we develop into our portals should also be available via an API and that strategy has paid off.  Resellers can now perform the full lifecycle management of a mobile SIM card via an API including the initial provisioning, the in-life management and usage monitoring through to changing the tariff on a SIM card or even cancelling it at the end of its useful life.

We are the only supplier to provide a tried-and-tested programme to identify, qualify and win mobile data opportunities within existing customer bases (Mobile-data Revenue Generator). We work with partners to identify opportunities we know we can win, generating profitable recurring revenue streams.

Products and services are in demand

The cloud market is always changing, and it can be hard for customers to know which solutions work in a cloud environment and which don’t. The cloud will always work best for services that are hard to build, but easy to consume.

Jola has accomplished this in many ways, by creating easy to consume APIs and portals for connectivity, along with services like voice. Now we’re seeing the overlay services, services that sit on top of existing cloud products, support systems with AI integration.

Best solutions

Education is key. Work with a channel-supplier like Jola, who understands the industry, has seen many solutions developed over time and who can identify common scenarios. 

Challenges

The move to the cloud can be a challenging one, especially as there are so many vendors selling cloud services. A common consideration we see from partners is being able to centralise services into one platform, especially when it comes to things like connectivity. They value a single centralised platform, where all services can be consumed and managed.

Additionally, delegation of control is also a fundamental aspect of cloud migration and management. Jola’s platforms help partners give their customers the access they require to self-manage and provision.

Data security and privacy

Data security has always been important however businesses are more aware of how their data is used and secured than ever. Work with partners who adhere to certifications and standards, who prioritise data security as part of their portfolio and who are open an honest about how they use and process data. Jola helps ensure security including Cloudflare protection on all our Fixed IP SIM products.

The future

I think big drivers for the cloud market over the next 12-24 months will be AI and Operational Efficiency, and how it integrates with existing technologies like Data Management, Observability and Analytics.

Jola supports a wide range of APIs that help partners integrate our systems into theirs, increasing they ability to consume our services, and build upon them, increasing operational efficiency for partners.

Customers hold a wealth of information, often they don’t know how useful or valuable that information is to them, or the success of their business. I think we will start to see new cloud services tap into that data and help drive growth within segments and verticals. Jola is helping to drive that revolution be exposing more information, in a secure and consumable way, allowing partners to create deeper integrations that help power the next generation of cloud services.