Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Most resellers and MSPs in the UK either sell or have sold mobile but comparatively, few have productised mobile data. In terms of margin and opportunity, the two couldn’t be more different, but resellers set up to bill CDRs and support traditional mobile have a head start when it comes to mobile data.

For many PSTN replacement projects, mobile data is the only viable solution. If resellers don’t establish a partnership with a mobile data aggregator soon their customers may come under attack from competitors with a full switch-off portfolio.

Jola’s strategy is simply to encourage the channel to get into mobile data by supplying differentiated products, keenly priced, delivered and managed via a world-class self-service portal. The only barrier is mindset and we overcome this through case studies, use cases, and our unique process that helps our partners find, convert and deliver large global projects.

The Mobile-Data Revenue Generator defines the way we work with the channel to qualify opportunities, capabilities and skills. We help our partners to focus on large opportunities and ultimately win large, high-margin long-term contracts.

Jola will help partners to uncover prospects with immediate requirements for mobile data SIMs. We will 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.

Channel partners are increasing their reach internationally and demand for numbers over multiple geographies, requiring separate SIP trunks for each country is increasing. This setup often leads to increased costs and complexity for both resellers and end-users. Jola has developed Regional Zoned SIP Channels to eliminate this problem with a fixed fee to protect monthly recurring margins.

Regional Zoned SIP Channels allow resellers to purchase two-way numbers with no per-minute inbound costs. Resellers simply buy the number of channels needed to cover multiple countries. Each zone represents a group of countries and means resellers can buy an aggregated channel for a zone in SIP Manager. Zones are stacked, so Zone 2 includes the countries of Zone 1.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CTO says, “Resellers servicing multi-national businesses often need numbers to cover multiple geographies, such as well-known retailers, manufacturers and gas and oil companies. Our new proposition is available in SIP Manager, so resellers have complete control over their channels as well as their margins.”

Deloitte says diversity takes various forms in a boardroom and can be broadly categorised into skills, expertise and experience. Having the optimal mix is paramount.

At Jola, we believe diverse boardrooms are often more successful because of the way they utilise the wide range of skills and experience at their disposal and the corporate culture they have cultivated. Diversity is part of our values and positively affects how we do business. It starts with an ingrained respect for others and a desire to work together to achieve a common goal. This influences how we innovate, our marketing style and the way we help partners to find and win lucrative deals.

Hiring people from diverse backgrounds can help to foster creativity and offer a range of perspectives and ideas. Employees are more likely to feel empowered to innovate in an environment where inclusivity is a priority.

Our focus at Jola is to find the best people, who share our values and train and support them so that they grow with us. Small things like changing our hours, flexible working, work experience programmes, graduate schemes, and apprenticeship programmes have all been successful for us. We coach people on how we communicate with each other, and we don’t tolerate discrimination of any kind. We are problem solvers, so if we find the right person and they face a challenge, we work with them to overcome it.

We don’t shout about it but we do have experienced channel professionals running our business who are generous with their time and have mentored, trained and inspired many of us in the channel. Watching and learning from others is the key in my view, which you can get from great people you work with, but also from networking both inside and outside of the channel. If we keep learning and inspiring and training others to come with us in our careers, removing barriers in our way, there is nothing stopping us. 

Today channel suppliers need to do so much more than train their channel partners on products and portals, especially with newer technologies such as M2M and IoT. Training webinars are expected but successful vendors go much further than this, taking partners through slick onboarding processes and programmes which generate new recurring revenue streams.

Companies that can demonstrate success not just through case studies and testimonials but through a structured programme are most in demand. Resellers need help to productise solutions, find prospects and close deals. So much time and resource is wasted on chasing deals that can’t be won. Vendors with proven programmes that start with buy-in from senior management, engagement with sales and marketing teams and training of provisioning, support and billing teams are the most successful.

Jola developed the Mobile-data Revenue Generator (MRG™) programme during Lockdown. Openreach engineers were stood down and resellers were looking for alternative revenue streams. A long-standing Jola partner asked us to look at their customer base to identify mobile data opportunities from our experience in different sectors. We found a major retailer providing access to sensitive CCTV via insecure consumer SIMs bought off the high street. The partner replaced hundreds of SIMs with secure Fixed IP alternatives running over Jola’s secure DDOS-protected Cloudflare network and managed within Mobile Manager®. By controlling usage and limiting on-site visits, the retailer saved time and money. The partner instantly added thousands of pounds of recurring 40% margin revenue to their P&L.

Demand

With technologies being switched off (PSTN, ISDN, 3G) and the current economic climate, demand for cost-effective, managed mobile data solutions from the channel, has never been so high. We are seeing an exponential rise in demand for SIMs not only for use in 5G/4G routers, pre-Ethernet connectivity and Ethernet back-up but also for digital signage, monitoring and smart devices.  Resellers, manufacturers and service companies are finding new uses for mobile data daily and, as we accelerate towards 5G, this is unlikely to slow down.

Opportunities

Public Sector

The NHS has rolled out iPads to ambulance crews all over the UK recently. The iPads will help them access medical records to help inform their course of action.

MSPs who help ambulance trusts roll out technology and who previously worked with mobile networks directly have found that partnering with aggregators offering multi-network services and a management portal gives them so much more control and removes the headache of dealing with multiple carriers and manual requests for changes.

Digital signage

AV Specialists are ordering complete, secure connectivity packages for digital signage, to arrive plug-and-play to each site, and consisting of an intelligent 4G router, a SIM and some clever configurations to prevent hackers from accessing the signs. Devices arrived pre-configured with an app, allowing auto-configuration, saving time and money.

Buses and Coaches

Specialists are novating SIMs on various tariffs and price plans with their Private APN for bus and coach companies for cashless ticketing systems and WiFi. End-users can manage data usage directly on their own management portal.

Car Parks

IT Resellers provide both voice and data and data-only SIMs for car parks.  They can use aggregated data SIMs and voice and data SIMs, which means they can share data across sites to avoid data overage charges and use a Private APN for their CCTV cameras.

Monitoring

MSPs are helping property owners and developers to monitor carbon levels. They have created solutions to monitor energy consumption across many different devices within the home. Their devices need 4G to report usage information and for general maintenance of the equipment.

General

Most telecommunications resellers use SIMs for short-term internet connectivity, 4G backup and as part of PSTN replacement solutions where fixed-line connectivity is not practical.

The opportunity for the channel is massive. The challenge is finding the opportunities each partner can win. Suppliers that can help resellers target opportunities they can win are crucial. Solutions need to be easy to sell, roll out and manage.

Key Trends

A key trend driving the as-a-service model is the move to IP and the imminent PSTN switch-off. There are millions of single-call PSTN lines in the UK that are soon to be end-of-life. Upgrading to broadband is expensive and capital costs of converters and 4G routers soon mount up. Device-as-a-service models have solved this problem with no up-front hardware costs and low monthly charges, plus the added benefit of ‘advance replacement’ and free returns for faulty routers.

Look for a channel-only supplier with

• A real-time, fully automated, API-enabled, white-label portal that connects to every mobile network in the world
• A network and internal systems protected from DDOS attacks
• Global eSIM networks
• OPEX and CAPEX financial models on hardware
• Financial stability and demonstrable growth
• A wide range of SIM options across a number of different networks
• Cost-effective SIP-enabled 4G/5G PSTN replacement products
• Routers with proprietary auto-configuration and management software built-in
• A programme to help you identify opportunities you can win

Jola was shortlisted for two awards and won Best Wireless Connectivity Provider at the Comms Business Awards in London on Thursday night. The judges found Jola’s entry to be the most compelling because of its use of case examples.

Andrew Dickinson, CEO Jola, commented, “We were delighted to win this award. We continue to grow and to invest in people, products, platforms and processes. We have a talented team here at Jola who are dedicated to supporting our growing partner base. It is great to see so many Jola partners building profitable revenue streams from our unique mobile data solutions. We would like to thank all our staff, partners and suppliers for all their support.”

Social Housing

Jola supplies MSPs with mobile data solutions to monitor and control the usage of gas and electric systems in social housing. Usage is monitored to try and create efficiencies and move towards a carbon-neutral goal. The challenge their customers have is one of affordability. Hardware costs are high as is deployment countrywide with single network coverage issues.

Hardware

End-users expect always-on 24/7/365 internet connectivity and reliable hardware to be able to monitor usage in near real-time. They don’t want to be paying over the odds for data usage and would prefer to pay monthly for hardware.

Partners can work with end-user businesses to meet the unique connectivity requirements of their customers, helping to test and roll out solutions which exactly meet their needs.

Trends

In the upcoming year, businesses are expected to focus on several trends in the analytics space. Automated analytics is set to increase allowing businesses to quickly analyse data and to generate insights without manual analysis. Machine learning algorithms are predicted to be used more widely to help with decision-making. There will be a greater emphasis on data security. Real-time analytics will be a major focus and there will be a shift towards hybrid cloud analytics as businesses look to gain competitive advantage and retain security over their data.

5G

4G/5G routers are in demand across the channel and in almost every vertical market our partners operate in.  As intelligent mobile data becomes faster, more reliable and more widespread, end-users are choosing it over fixed-line connectivity solutions for its operational and commercial advantages. A good example of this is the PSTN switch-off. There are millions of end-points across the UK that will use 4G/5G connectivity over more expensive SOGEA connections. 3G sunsetting is also driving demand for 4G/5G services.  There are still millions of devices connected to 3G networks in the UK which need to move to 4G/5G or the services will simply stop working.

Value Add

It is important that resellers and MSPs include hardware that adds value to their proposition.  As an example, we provide a range of routers and gateways that Jola has developed layers of automation and management into. All of our devices are provisioned and managed within our real-time portal Mobile Manager®.  Our partners can view usage, signal strength, and uptime statistics. They can reboot devices and pair routers with SIMs directly.  We have also added a Device-as-a-Service model (DaaS) to our offering, which provides a CAPEX-free commercial model with the added benefit of in-term upgrades and advance replacements that add considerable value over upfront purchases.    

Best Vendors

It's important to work with a vendor that allows you to differentiate your offering and helps you to find and win profitable deals.  Selling solutions as opposed to box shifting will give you the edge when you’re in a competitive bid situation. Jola’s routers are suitable for mobile broadband and large-scale IoT rollouts. Devices are pre-configured with the Jola App, allowing auto-configuration. As a result, there was no need for manual configuration on-site; routers are delivered to site, ready to install, saving valuable time and set-up costs. To bolster security, Jola preconfigures security measures into the devices, to prevent third parties from accessing the routers. Routers are managed in our real-time management portal – Mobile Manager®.

Apart from our Macs, Jola owns no infrastructure. Everything we use and sell resides in the cloud, utilising both Azure and AWS. This is a good place to start for MSPs looking to sell cloud-based products to their customers because they can act as true alpha testers for everything. The key to building a scalable cloud business and a competitive advantage is enabling software, and APIs in particular. If potential suppliers don’t have well-developed APIs we don’t buy from them. 

By cascading responsibility for provisioning to their customers, MSPs give them control, whilst at the same time minimising human error and saving on staff costs. We have experimented with outsourcing offshore development teams but what we gained in lower costs, we lost in flexibility. An agile methodology is essential these days and the days of detailed technical specifications before coding begins are gone. Software development teams need to be able to switch between projects and even drop them completely depending on the needs of the business and the demands of end customers. We operate an in-house team that understands our channel-only model and is aligned with our overall strategy.

Importantly the provisioning portal extended to end customers has to integrate with every other part of the business. This includes billing, finance, CRM and support. Security is critical both at a device and network level. Jola uses the Cloudflare network for global speed and security. Whilst this seems expensive it isn’t when spread across hundreds of thousands of SIMs and when you consider the real and reputational cost of a successful DDOS attack or data security breach.

Demand for faster, more reliable internet connectivity has never been higher for business users. Companies are turning to mobile data solutions for both interim and longer-term solutions, as they can provide faster speeds and be installed very quickly. This provides opportunities for trusted suppliers.

Jola partners differentiate themselves by offering bespoke solutions for different vertical markets such as secure, intelligent 4G and 5G solutions for digital signage. They are plug-and-play, will work anywhere with an electrical socket and are protected from hackers.

MSPs save money on surveys, as they use un-steered multi-network SIMs which will connect to the strongest mobile signal. They can be rapidly deployed to multiple sites globally and will arrive pre-configured with the Jola App, allowing auto-configuration. There is no need for manual configuration on site, saving valuable time and set-up costs.

With technologies being switched off (PSTN, ISDN, 3G) and the current economic climate, demand for cost-effective, managed mobile data solutions from the channel, has never been so high. There are solutions such as lift lines and alarm lines where fixed line connectivity is impractical and 4G/5G is much faster and cheaper to deploy.

Hotels and care homes are replacing single phone lines with managed 4G and 5G solutions and other single PSTN applications like lifts, alarm lines and door entry systems are following suit. There is a need for temporary WiFi for construction sites and fixed IP SIMs for CCTV cameras. Multi-Net SIMs are required for ANPR cameras, wearables and tracking devices. 3G SIMs in thousands of devices from fixed line backup to street signs need to be replaced. The list goes on, and the opportunity for the channel is massive. 

There is huge demand from businesses for unlimited SIMs for mobile phones, tablets, routers and smart devices. Jola’s Three Business Unlimited SIMs combine the UK’s best 5G network with price points which allow resellers to make substantial recurring margins.