Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

The channel has an essential role in educating businesses to adopt new technologies. It is our responsibility to highlight products being switched off, such as 3G and PSTN, to help companies prepare, with improved, more cost-effective solutions.

Vehicle trackers, payment terminals and industrial handheld devices will stop working as 3G is switched off unless companies are presented with a future-proof solution.

5G is becoming more widely available and 5G hardware is reducing in price, making 5G a viable alternative to fixed line connectivity in some areas, offering customers a faster, more reliable solution.

Improving online security is becoming more of a priority with Denial-of-Service attacks on the increase. Jola has been running Fixed IP traffic over Cloudflare for many years protecting connected CCTV cameras and smart devices from attack.

Trusted advisors

End-user businesses don’t ask for information about a product, they ask for help solving a problem. The supplier who understands the challenges and proposes a simple, cost-effective solution, becomes the go-to advisor for similar challenges in the future.

Jola took home two awards at the Comms National Awards last Thursday night at the Park Plaza Hotel in London. We won Best Partner Programme over £10m turnover and Best Partner Portal for Mobile Manager. We also won Highly Commended for Diversity Equality & Inclusion.

The judges shortlisted over 200 entries, a record number, from 101 suppliers and resellers including other well-known channel businesses such as BT Wholesale, Talk Talk Wholesale, Giacom and Gamma.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola's CEO, commented, “We are thrilled to win these awards and proud to sponsor the Mobile IoT Reseller categories. This is an incredible achievement, and I want to extend my thanks to our suppliers, partners, and amazing team for their continued support and dedication. It was a fantastic evening.”

The Park Plaza was packed with Jola partners and prospects on 25^th September 2024. Over eighty channel partners and prospects gathered to hear about Jola’s innovations and how these are creating high-recurring margin opportunities for resellers and MSPs. With legacy mobile and PSTN networks being decommissioned, there is no better time for the channel to sell mobile data.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO welcomed partners and explained how Jola has built on carrier technology to create a secure network and unique solutions, that are easily packaged, sold and managed on Jola’s award-winning white-label portals. Jola’s CSO, Lee Broxson highlighted increasing customer demand across key verticals for innovative mobile data solutions, from digital signage to tracking devices. Ben Merrills, Jola’s CTO spoke about how products are designed, developed and tailored to meet the exact needs of end users whilst delivering high recurring margins for resellers. He teased products launching soon such as managed Teltonika routers, 5G eSIMs delivered via QR codes and satellite connectivity solutions. Magnus Wright, Jola’s Head of Sales explained key case studies in each vertical market and how Jola helps partners find and win these deals to help grow their businesses. Guests were invited to enjoy a networking lunch with the Jola sales team to start the discovery process and uncover deals partners are most likely to win.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola CEO, commented, “This was our largest partner event to date, reflecting the current surge of interest from the channel on mobile data. Established Jola partners have increased the value of their businesses and added millions in recurring margins over the last few years. The market is still growing and every MSP and reseller should have a mobile data proposition. We had great feedback on all of our speakers.”

The IoT market used to be the preserve of a small number of IoT specialists and the IoT departments inside the Mobile Network Operators. IoT applications were limited to some mega-scale consumer-focused services and B2B remote sensing services focused on specific vertical markets, such as utilities.

Almost every business can benefit from IoT with thousands of different applications being available off the shelf.  The public cloud providers such as AWS and Azure complement these with mature and secure IoT development environments allowing organisations to develop their bespoke solutions.

What IoT solutions are in demand?

Some of the most popular IoT solutions that we find our resellers are involved in are vehicle telemetry and tracking, connected security and fire systems, machine monitoring, asset tracking, smart healthcare and smart city applications.

What opportunities are available to the Channel around the IoT?

There is no reason why the channel can’t be involved in any type of IoT opportunity by partnering with the right suppliers.  Jola provides IoT connectivity, IoT hardware and IoT solutions through our 1400 channel partners.  Where we don’t have all the elements required for an end-to-end solution we can help direct a reseller to the vendor partner that can provide the missing pieces of the puzzle.

With IoT connectivity, the most common requirement is for multi-network un-steered SIMs to provide resilience and the best coverage. Typically, mobile operators cannot provide these themselves. The channel has the opportunity to provide the right SIM for its customers without being tied to any single mobile operator’s network footprint or product portfolio.

Awareness and support for mental health has improved over the last few years. Organisations like Jola are inclusive and diverse. They provide all employees with private medical care and support for physical and mental conditions. Employees need to feel supported and valued within a business and channel businesses benefit from strong relationships with an experienced and successful team.

At Jola, we provide a safe environment for the neurodiverse and check in with them regularly. As a business, we provide confidential counselling and encourage holidays and social interaction with our team, such as family fun days and team nights out. 

About Jola

Jola is an award-winning, channel-only supplier of business communications specialising in mobile data SIMs. We are a global eSIM MVNO, providing innovative IoT and mobile data solutions to MSPs, ISPs, IT support companies and telecommunications resellers.

Integrations are important as they help businesses to improve performance, reduce costs and enhance customer relationships. UC improves productivity with simple click-to-call users when they are available and helps teams collaborate. Common integrations are Microsoft with Cisco and common CRM software.

Partners successful in this area are looking at how their businesses interact with customers and how this can be enhanced using unified communications. Vendors can help by identifying key use cases highlighting unique solutions to common problems.

Selling the benefits

According to Metrigy Research, companies that utilise integrated UC and CC solutions from a single vendor reported a nearly 100 per cent revenue increase, a 14 per cent cost decrease, a 57 per cent customer ratings improvement, and a 37 per cent agent efficiency improvement. 

By reducing the time spent switching between different communication platforms, UC allows employees to focus more on their tasks. With real-time sharing capabilities, employees can seamlessly connect from any location and device with an internet connection. This flexibility enables remote work, and international collaborations, and fosters a work-from-anywhere culture.

Unique, cost-effective managed solutions are the key to success for channel partners trying to win new business. End-users buy from suppliers they trust, who are responsive to their needs. Being a one-stop-shop for all of their requirements is important as is working with an aggregator.

Future

At the moment, the UC collaboration experience is all based on two dimensions video and screen sharing.  However, we already see our SIMs being used in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications in specialist industries with purpose-built tools and devices.  However, companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google are investing heavily in AR and VR for both consumers and businesses.  This combined with the widespread availability of 5G makes me think it won’t be too far away before the UC and Collaboration tools that we use every day start to open up AR and VR for widespread B2B use.

Cultural standing  

We assess the strength of our cultural standing against our core values. These are not advertised on our company walls they are ingrained in our behaviour. We put our partners first. We track how quickly calls are answered, how fast tickets are resolved and how happy our partners are with our service. The best measure of our cultural standing is the longevity of our staff.

Cultural priorities

We are accountable. We do what we say we are going to do. This is important as our partners trust us to respond quickly so they can get back to their customers. This impacts day-to-day behaviours as we honour our commitments and if we can’t, we let people know before the deadline and renegotiate so we don’t let each other or our partners down.

Cultural focus 

Right now we are focussed on the growth plan for financial year 24/25. To achieve the high targets we have set for ourselves, we need to recruit additional resources in sales, marketing and support. We will be recruiting against our values to find innovative, ambitious individuals, who will help partners to find, win and roll out unique solutions.

Cultural competitive advantage

We offer a unique environment to learn new skills, develop careers, and build a successful company. We offer competitive packages and the opportunity to be first to market with innovative solutions. The work is rewarding and the rewards are incentivising.

Living by our values

Our culture is driven and demonstrated by the founders of our business. It’s how we behave and how our team behaves. We share our success in company meetings, reward success in our appraisals and reflect on how we can improve our success. Culture is something that is learnt. You can see it in action in a company. It’s how things are done and how you get things done. It does not require a big budget.

What does it mean?

The ongoing PSTN switch-off represents a substantial business opportunity. Many major operators and resellers may underestimate the number of businesses using PSTN lines in locations where high-speed broadband is unnecessary. Resellers offering PSTN replacement solutions leveraging 4G find they are easy to sell. Many resellers will already be talking to their customers about the PSTN switch-off and guiding them towards appropriate solutions in plenty of time, potentially saving their customers money whilst making more margin.

Adapted offerings

Businesses don’t have ISDN, WLR3 or ADSL problems. Businesses have credit card payment processing, voice communication, security alarm monitoring and emergency lift line problems. The channel’s job is to be the trusted advisor and recommend the right solution for each problem. As a mobile broadband company, we’ve seen resellers use low-cost SIMs to solve all the problems mentioned above whilst saving their customers money and making more margin than they would be by simply pushing fibre-based solutions.

Retailers will need to replace single PSTN lines in lifts, payment terminals and alarm lines. Often mobile broadband solutions are faster, cheaper and more practical than fixed-line connectivity solutions. Selecting the right SIM package is key and managing the data costs is essential.

Jola helps partners uncover prospects with immediate requirements for mobile data SIMs. We help develop unique solutions to existing issues, they can't buy from anyone else at a competitive price for them and margin for partners. We are channel-only so by helping resellers fill their pipeline we are filling our own and can help pitch and close big deals. We are on hand to support MSPs and their customers throughout the buying process and post-sale and can help partners use this winning proposition to target and win similar deals.

In many workplaces, the option didn’t exist to regularly work remotely and as a result, companies didn’t necessarily provide the UC and collaboration tools required.  COVID changed all that and remote working became mandatory for most of us.  At first, we used the tools for multi-person video calls, but quickly started sharing screens and in many cases moved to mass participation web conferences.

Shift to all IP

We predict that the country will be split into businesses with type A and type B resellers. Type A resellers will already be talking to their customers about the PSTN switch-off and guiding them towards appropriate solutions in plenty of time, potentially saving their customers money whilst making more margin. Type B resellers will be too busy to worry about 2027, so they won’t proactively do anything about the PSTN switch-off.  As a result, they might lose some of their customers to the proactive Type A resellers. Alternatively, they will be having a very stressful time in 2027 when suddenly their customers are being bombarded by warnings coming from every direction about their services being disconnected and then rushing to prevent that from happening.

What partners want

Partners want easy solutions to brand, sell, support and bill. They want happy customers, placing all their available business with them. They want healthy recurring revenues to help increase the value of their businesses.

Jola won Best White Label Solution and received a Highly Commended certificate for Wholesaler of the Year at the Comms Business Awards in London last week.

The judges shortlisted 94 entries from over 160 submitted from well-known channel businesses such as Giacom and Virgin Media Business Wholesale. To win such a prestigious white-label award demonstrates the strength of the Jola channel proposition.

Cherie Howlett Jola’s CMO, commented, “We are delighted to win two awards and to sponsor the Best ICT Solution. It is a fantastic achievement and I would like to thank our suppliers, partners and wonderful team for their continued support and dedication. Craig Charles was a great host and we had a brilliant evening celebrating.”