Altavox Communications and Straightline Strategies Launch Partner Initiative aimed at IT Resellers

PRLog (Press Release) - Mar 30, 2009 -
Altavox Communications and Straightline Strategies, Inc. announced the formation of a strategic partnership to expand the U.S. market for Altavox' Vortalk-branded hosted and on-premise IP-PBX offerings.
Straightline will develop Altavox channel program and recruit a reseller base made up of solution providers that can install, configure and maintain IP-PBX systems for small-to-medium sized businesses.
"We chose to work with Straightline due to their tremendous expertise in channel program development and reseller recruitment," stated John Scully, Altavox President.
As part of the arrangement, Straightline will implement the Vortalk IP-PBX call center edition to utilize during the program recruitment.
"I'm very impressed with the Vortalk solution," said Brian Berlin, Straightline President. "It's perfect for my business, it scales and it's backed by Altavox".
Berlin also pointed out that his company investigated a number of competing systems and decided the Vortalk system offered the most features and reliability.
"Resellers have a lot of choices as well," Berlin continued, "but the Vortalk system, whether hosted or on-premise, offers traditional data VARs a way to offer a field-tested, robust system while earning recurring revenue downstream."
Berlin and Scully believe there is a large untapped market of potential resellers that are looking for ways to expand their solution portfolio and develop monthly recurring revenue.
"If they sell a hosted system, resellers can still earn revenue from on-site IP phone configuration and training," observed Scully. "Or they can build an on-premise system with our software and their own server platform and deliver a custom IP telephony solution to their customers."
Scully goes on to say that in hosted or on-premise scenarios, the reseller also generates recurring revenue from the customer's inbound toll free and outbound long distance usage, which can far exceed the revenue from the initial system sale.
The entry point is easy since IT resellers do not need Voice over IP (VoIP) or telephony experience. Altavox handles the configuration and programming of the telephone system, while the resellers handle the hands-on network and customer premise equipment end of things.  
Altavox has just launched a new product currently called “PBX Unboxed”, a virtual PBX service, that Scully believes will be of great interest to IT resellers who have customers that want the benefits and features of IP-PBX without enterprise or call center features.
“PBX Unboxed” can be installed by a tech with basic business IT skills,” states Scully, “and in production in a single day."
Scully believes the introduction of an IP-PBX system leads to network upgrades, an area where the targeted resellers already excel.
About Altavox and Vortalk. Vortalk.com (www.vortalk.com) offers a full range of IP telephone solutions including pure IP trunking, Virtual PBX service and high end, hosted and on-premise enterprise and call center IP phone systems.  As a vendor of both telephone service and telephone systems Vortalk is able to provide a complete end to end solution.  The new low cost "PBX Unboxed" service is the piece that fills in the gap between trunking and high end systems.  Designed for the small business needing two to twenty-five extensions with basic features and very low cost, it is ideal for businesses needing to connect several smaller locations or allow people to work from home while staying connected.  
Average ticket price for a 5-user PBX Unboxed system complete with IP phones and a VoIP router is just $999, with monthly service cost of $39.95 per month per line for unlimited domestic calling, e-fax service, voicemail to email and dozens of other features. Cost per phone drops with larger systems.
About Straightline Strategies. Founded by Brian Berlin, IT industry veteran in 2007, Straightline Strategies (www.slssinc.com) delivers outsourced sales development services to emerging tech firms needing to fill urgent gaps in their go-to-market plans. The company works with companies that have direct and/or indirect sales channels, and specializes in reseller recruitment.