Sangoma: Partners to Get More Market Opportunity via Star2Star

Sangoma partners have a lot to look forward to with the company’s $437 million acquisition of Star2Star.

That’s according to David Hardy, Sangoma’s vice president of North American sales. The merger will create a key rival for 8×8, RingCentral, Vonage and more.

The Sangoma-Star2Star merger follows a series of M&A transactions in cloud communications. That includes 12 CPaaS-related deals in 2020.

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Hardy talks about what Sangoma partners can expect from the pairing.

Channel Partners: Tell us about Sangoma’s partner program. What types of partners do you work with?

Sangoma’s David Hardy

David Hardy: Sangoma has two different models that we go to market with, especially here in North America, and that is a two-tier distribution. We still sell a lot of on-premises PBX and products that go into communications such as gateways and SBCs, and such. And that generally flows through our distributors. So we have a network of distributors worldwide. And then we have resellers at different levels and with deal registration, so they’re protected as they develop business opportunities. It’s a well-oiled machine in that regard.

For cloud, we work with master agents. We work with the likes of Jenne as a master agent, which works great. And then also TCG, Sandler Partners, AppSmart, Nexus, the list goes on. So we’ve got a well-developed channel for both on-premises and cloud.

CP: What will acquiring Star2Star mean for Sangoma partners? Will this mean big opportunities for them? Can you give some examples?

DH: If we look at what Star2Star brings to the table, it basically provides a full spectrum of offerings. You can think
of it as a one-stop shop. So for all the communication needs and deployments such as on-premises, as well as pure cloud and a hybrid solution, that’s something that Star2Star definitely brings to the table. Also, from a segment size as well. Sangoma has done very well in the cloud space, in the small market and moving up into
the midsize. Star2Star has been very successful in the midsize market going up into the enterprise.

So it’s very complementary. As a matter of fact, as we looked at our win-loss data and looking at who we competed against, we rarely ran into Star2Star. So they’ve been very successful and we’ve been successful. So together, we’ll be able to cover the entire market from small to large accounts.

CP: With the two companies coming together, does that change your competition?

DH: It does. I think we’re going to keep some of the same competitors, but it does elevate us as a bigger
company. Now, with the two companies combined together, we’re in that echelon with the larger companies.

From a Sangoma perspective, we’ll be able to compete not in that smaller to midsize, but all of it into the very enterprise space as well. So we’ll run into the competition more and more in those spaces. We’ll be competing more
aggressively with the bigger competitors — definitely would be …