Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

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.”

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.

In the annual partner satisfaction survey, Jola scored a Net Promoter Score of 55, categorising the company as ‘great’, with 44% of Jola partners giving them 10/10 and 95% scoring them 7 or higher. In the comments, Jola partners praised Jola’s products, pricing, portals, people and service.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO, commented, ‘I am happy with our NPS score and the feedback we received from partners. We have over 1400 resellers choosing Jola as their preferred mobile connectivity supplier. Our relentless product development continues with a list of unique products you can’t buy from anyone else designed to help partners differentiate and win bigger deals. We continue to grow and invest in people, products, platforms and processes. We have a fantastic team dedicated to supporting our growing partner base and it was great to see so many of them named in the survey.”

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.

Traditional telephone lines will cease to exist leaving vulnerable people in care homes and hospices without a working phoneline unless we step in. 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.

Support

MSPs and resellers partner with aggregators and experts in their fields to allow them to deliver the widest range of solutions at the best possible prices. They look for partners with automated portals so they can retain control of their customer experience. They look for suppliers who can help them identify and win new opportunities. Jola partners benefit from their MRG™ programme, a proven process to target and close opportunities, maximising customer satisfaction.

Mobile data solutions are a huge growth area for the channel because they can replace traditional fixed lines as well as provide reliable connectivity for a plethora of new M2M applications, of which digital signage, ANPR/CCTV cameras and tracking are just a few examples. Book to bill is days rather than months and recurring margins are reasonable. Most MSPs and resellers partner with a single mobile data MVNO and aggregator, rather than try and deal with the MNOs directly. Specialist aggregators have developed differentiated channel products that end users cannot buy from the MNOs directly and are better priced. The best suppliers will have a suite of intuitive software tools and a portal to make the management of multiple suppliers easier, and less risky with maximum control and margin realisation. Recent innovations in global multi-network SIMs and QR codes offer the channel innovative solutions that their customers need which will save them money.

New Capabilities

Using a single UK number, Jola partners can access multiple networks in the UK and Ireland, for voice, data and SMS. This innovative roaming product can be steered or un-steered and is available via eSIM, triple-cut plastic SIM and, uniquely, a simple QR code.

The first QR implementation saw thousands of handsets go live in minutes simply by using the phone’s camera to scan a single QR code. There is no alternative quite like RoamNet Voice on the market, and certainly nothing else available to resellers and MSPs.

Jola partners have a genuinely differentiated product to win against the Mobile Networks with great recurring margins and real-time management and control via Mobile Manager.

3G/5G

One of the biggest frustrations for resellers is customers who simply delay making a decision. The sunsetting of 3G and the PSTN switch-off are compelling events, forcing businesses and public authorities to act. 3G networks must be upgraded and this means major projects to swap physical SIM cards or use QR codes. Resellers and MSPs should be looking for these networks. 4G Advanced and 5G are providing reliable speeds often above fixed-line alternatives and now cover more than 95% of the population.

Building a mobile offering

Choosing the right supplier will tick all the boxes for resellers and MSPs to move quickly into selling mobile data products. Wholesale suppliers will need to give channel partners the tools to uncover and win deals, usually competing with the direct sales arms of the mobile networks. They must be an aggregator with access to all the networks and ideally, they will also be an independent MVNO. Most importantly everything must be automated, with real-time APIs offering zero-touch provisioning and management through a single self-service portal. 

The most successful of these will be highly innovative, with a constant stream of relevant mobile data and IoT products that the networks would otherwise take years to develop and launch. When you partner with the right channel supplier, mobile data is easy to sell, support and bill.

The prospect for the channel is significant. ICT resellers already enjoy strong relationships with businesses and the public sector having sold them a range of IT and telecoms infrastructure. Within this customer base, opportunities for mobile data solutions exist in asset tracking, digital signage, mobile WiFi, monitoring and utilities. 

Jola won Robustel’s Most Innovative Partner Award at the Robustel Global Partner Summit. Doug Morley, Jola’s Product Manager, was presented with the award on 24^th April at their event in Istanbul.

The award recognises the innovative solutions Jola has developed using Robustel hardware. They include Intelligent 4G and 5G routers, secure digital signage solutions and Device-as-a-Service.

“Working together we have solved common challenges faced by partners when rolling out solutions in multiple locations on tight deadlines. Security and pre-configuration are critical as is monitoring and managing devices and their data usage remotely.” Adrian Sunderland, CEO, Jola.

Imagine you have an order for thousands of SIMs for handsets destined for multiple locations around the world. You would usually need to send the right SIM card to the right device in the right location, and activate it, which can be an operational challenge under tight deadlines. Jola now has a new solution where partners are issued a single QR code in Mobile Manager instead. This is supplied to their customer for every device to scan, slashing operational costs and helping to reduce carbon footprints.

Mobile Manager was the first, white-label management portal designed to meet the specific needs of the channel. It allows resellers to order and manage SIMs from multiple suppliers, eliminate data overage charges and support their customers in real-time.

In eight years we have added products and functionality to the portal regularly so we can meet any requirement in any market for mobile data, globally. We have over 1400 partners using the portal regularly who tell us Mobile Manager meets their needs for:

• Choice – you can buy what you need on any network in a single portal
• Control – you can view and manage your data usage in real-time
• Automation - you retain complete control over your customer experience
• White-label – you can remove every trace of the Jola brand

What’s new?

We have rolled out 12 software updates in 12 months and the latest additions are RoamNet and RoamNet Voice. SIM cards with a UK phone number roaming over multiple UK mobile networks and hundreds globally using the Wireless Logic global network. Devices can be activated via a single QR code.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO commented, “QR codes are a simple solution to a complex problem faced by many of our partners. Adding QR codes to Mobile Manager was the next logical step for us to help reduce operational costs and headaches for our partners. The feedback has been fantastic. Partners can feel confident their end-users will be connected exactly when they need to be, wherever they are.”

Jola celebrates its 10^th birthday in April 2024, after its best-ever financial performance.

We now have over 1400 partners selling unique mobile data solutions, earning healthy recurring margins, and increasing the value of their companies with happy customers. Our ability to innovate and automate, as well as help partners identify, qualify and win significant deals from the mobile networks is part of our success story. The other is the fantastic relationships with have with our suppliers, partners and exceptional team.

Adrian Sunderland, CEO of Jola commented, “Our mission is to serve the channel providing solutions for every mobile data requirement globally. We strive to make unique solutions you can’t buy from anyone else, make them easy to sell, provision, support and bill. We enjoy working with partners on new and innovative solutions to common problems using the latest technologies. When we look back at what we have achieved over the last ten years it is quite phenomenal, when we started with nothing but enthusiasm, a belief in each other and a passion for the channel. We look forward to achieving our next growth milestone.”

With the sunsetting of 3G, the PSTN Switch off and the rollout of 5G, demand for mobile data solutions has never been higher. Resellers and MSPs are in the perfect position to take advantage of this and they are looking for reliable suppliers who can help them grow high-margin, recurring mobile data revenues, whilst simultaneously increasing the overall value of their company.

Wholesale suppliers will need to give channel partners the tools to win deals, usually competing with the direct sales arms of the mobile networks. They must be an aggregator with access to all the networks and ideally, they will also be an independent MVNO. Most importantly everything must be automated, with real-time APIs offering zero-touch provisioning and management through a single self-service portal.

The most successful of these will be highly innovative, with a constant stream of relevant mobile data and IoT products that the networks would otherwise take years to develop and launch. When you partner with the right channel supplier, mobile data is easy to sell, support and bill.

The prospect for the channel is significant. ICT resellers already enjoy strong relationships with businesses and the public sector having sold them a range of IT and telecoms infrastructure. Within this customer base, opportunities for mobile data solutions exist in asset tracking, digital signage, mobile WiFi, monitoring and utilities.

Mobile data is an easy product to sell and provision and needs very little support. Jola signed just over 200 new partners in 2023 and now has nearly 1500. One of our partners recently won a huge deal for thousands of RoamNet data SIMs for use in phones and tablets. Using our unique QR technology eliminated the need for physical SIM cards, making the rollout quick and easy. QR codes are also a significant step towards minimising e-waste and removing several operational headaches. SIMs roam over hundreds of mobile networks and are managed via a single platform – Mobile Manager.

Jola SIMs also operate ANPR cameras, CCTV cameras, vending machines, digital signs and tracking devices around the world.

Our partners don’t have to add any more people in billing or accounts departments to support these deals. SIMs provision immediately on Mobile Manager, 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.