Unified communication vendor’s new CEO looking to link arms with all Cisco Premier and Select partners

Unified collaboration and communication vendor Sipsynergy has appointed a new CEO and chairman as it looks to grow its partner base.

Toby Gold, previously director of Northern Europe for Dell, will take over as CEO; and Tom Kelly, who has held several senior positions including chairman of Agilitas and managing director of Logicalis, will become chairman of the board.

“When Tom spoke to me about the challenge, I thought ‘this is a perfect opportunity for me’. It brings together all my knowledge and experience to really exploit that market,” said Gold.

Sipsynergy has a vendor partnership with Cisco, and Gold said it currently has 50 reseller partners, the majority of which are Cisco Premier and Select partners.

“Our initial ramp-up of activity will be growing our resellers, with a view to establishing distribution in the near future,” said Gold. “I have just appointed a sales team whose focus will be on selecting and recruiting from the Cisco partner base. We are taking a proactive approach to recruiting Cisco partners. I hope to have some sort of relationship with all Cisco Select and Premier partners.”

There are around 350 Cisco Select and Premier Partners, and Gold said that the timeframe for establishing relationships will depend on how quickly Sipsynergy can establish its sales team.

Sipsynergy focuses on web-based collaboration and messaging and being able to access the services on any device, from any location.

Gold said the vendor targets SMBs because that market is not as well served in regards to unified collaboration as the enterprise market, but they are in need of the same services.

“SMBs are not well served at the minute. There is no one out there who can provide the end-to-end service like we can,” he explained. “An SMB customer can get access to the same services that a larger enterprise can, and they are getting it at the same sort of prices. So they are getting the same advantages the corporates have.”

Mathys & Squire LLP has been a Sipsynergy customer for around seven years. Its head of professional support, Ignatius Leong, said that the new appointments should mean greater support and more “manpower” from the vendor.

“Hopefully now that they have all these key people in place, it will mean greater expansion in support services from Sipsynergy,” he said. “I think this will help them beef up their core areas. They are good, but at times I feel that they stretch or don’t necessarily have the right manpower in the right places. Our experience of Sipsynergy is that their products are good, they are very responsive, and they are trying to aggressively get into serious markets.”