New Products, Services: Windstream, AT&T, RingCentral

The demand for products and services that function well in home work environments continued to dominate May’s channel landscape.

Take, for instance, AT&T’s Home Office Connectivity, which does just what it says. It provides enterprise-grade high speed internet service to workers’ homes via wireline or wireless broadband.

Then you have Star2Star, which gave partners a slew of new products and bundles appropriate for the work-from-home trend.

But not all of the focus in May was entirely on the home office. Take Poly’s new Room solutions, for example. The conferencing and collaboration provider debuted audio and video tools that mesh well with Microsoft Teams Rooms. Also, Kinetic Business by Windstream introduced a new SD-WAN service. SMBs are the target for the Windstream SD-WAN offer, built on VMware’s VeloCloud,

And that just scratches the surface. In the gallery below, you will also learn about new products and services from Vonage, RingCentral, Microsoft and more.

You’re about to see 12 new products and services partners can either sell or use to improve their businesses.

Did you miss our last new services roundup? You’ll find it here.

AT&T

AT&T introduced Home Office Connectivity, which provides business-paid internet access at home. Businesses can equip their employees with high-speed internet for enterprise at their homes, using wireless or wireline broadband.

By expanding access to enterprise-grade connectivity to residential locations, we can essentially put the office anywhere," said Mo Katibeh, AT&T Business' executive VP and CMO.

Learn more here.

But that's not all from the carrier. Cisco Webex calling from AT&T is now available via the channel. The companies say the new product gives businesses more access to cloud-based phone capabilities, so much so that businesses can "transform their voice communications" during and after the pandemic.

Get more on their partnership here.

RingCentral

RingCentral says its new unified desktop application improves enterprise communications. The app, which includes the company's message video phone (MVP) capabilities, streamlines the user experience. You can get it on Windows PCs and Macs.

The unified desktop application supports collaboration across a "highly mobile, dispersed workforce," RingCentral's channel VP told us.

There are many more features as well.

Poly

Poly unveiled new audio and video tools, part of a new series of Room Solutions, that work with Microsoft Teams Rooms. End users get a better conferencing experience while IT managers get the ability to scale for meeting rooms of all sizes.

Poly says it customized the tools to provide virtual collaboration experiences with little to no-touch control.

Get the full scoop on the new tools.

Kinetic Business by Windstream SD-WAN

Windstream's Kinetic Business lineup has a new SD-WAN offer for SMBs which helps manage how much broadband they use.

VMware's VeloCloud technology supports the service, accessible through a management portal. Windstream says Kinetic Business SD-WAN includes features generally not available at this low of a price.

“The inclusion of the our Insights engine in our SD-WAN management portal is a feature typically not associated with the small to mid-sized market,” said Joe Johnson, VP of product development and management.

Star2Star

UC provider Star2Star debuted products and services to support the work-from-home trend.

Among them is a set of packaged applications, which include urgent and mass notification, CRM integration and employee alerts. Another is Star2Star Service Insight, which delivers analytics on how employees interact with customers and internal departments.

Star2Star also announced four noteworthy bundles partners can sell.

Vonage

Vonage Contact Center for ServiceNow is a new integration between the UC and workflow software providers. The companies say it will improve productivity for businesses with call centers.

Because the service gives call center agents contextual and relevant data, it helps them collaborate better, the companies said. Another benefit: It meets the news of companies using disparate CRM and digital workflow applications.

Also new from Vonage is a suite that integrates the company's contact center and unified communications products and services. The company says partners now can offer a solution with a single interface that enables a "consistent, effortless user experience."

Aruba Networks

HPE's Aruba Networks beefed up its commitment to small businesses by adding network switches to its Instant On portfolio.

The 1930 series of switches are smart-managed devices that integrate with Aruba's Instant On wireless access points. You can centrally manage them from the Instant On mobile app.

Features include PoE to power access points and IoT devices, and security controls to protect against unauthorized access. But that's not all.

Google Meet

The conferencing and collaboration market is on fire in large part to how the pandemic has forced people out of offices and into working from home.

The revamped Google Meet, with new business-grade capabilities, might just be ready to take on its rivals. The search giant says it addressed many of Google Hangouts Meet's (its former name) limitations.

See what else Google improved.

Microsoft

The software giant gave partners a pair of new Surface PCs to sell. Microsoft also upgraded its Surface Dock, but delayed releasing much-anticipated dual-screen, foldable Surfaces partners were expecting this year.

Citing the pandemic as a reason for the delay, Microsoft said "we need to focus on meeting customers where they are now."

Get the full specs on the new Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3.

Dell

Dell also had PC news, unveiling its new premium Latitude 9510 laptop. It includes AI-based optimization and support for 5G wireless networks. Sporting a 15-inch display, it is the first of Dell's new top-line Series 9000 commercial laptops.

And like Microsoft, Dell says the pandemic has put constraints on its global supply chain. The 9510 was originally scheduled to arrive earlier this year.

Learn more about the 9510 and a handful of other updated models from Dell.

Kaseya

Kaseya, the RMM provider, introduced ProfitFuel and BudgetFuel to its IT complete suite of IT tools. The former is for MSPs and the latter for internal IT teams. Both offers promise to help save money and increase productivity, which Kaseya says helps MSPs get more customers and satisfy IT pros.

Kaseya CMO Mike Puglia says the new releases are timely as more people work from home. Here's what else they can do.

Zadara Storage

Storage-as-a-service capabilities from Zadara Storage are now available through Cyxtera's 62 hybrid-ready data centers. Customers can access the services, housed natively within the data centers, through the Cyxtera Marketplace. 

The offer allows you to pay for the storage you need without a long-term infrastructure investment. Using the services, customers get access to multitier storage as a service in the cloud.

We bet you want to learn more.