Answering the global CALLR

A common theme which runs through many aspects of delivering cloud services is the way it opens up partnerships of every type to create and develop new business opportunities much faster than would previously have been considered possible.

Those partnerships can give rise to developments across the board, from the creation of entirely new products or services through to, as in the case of THECALLR and Verizon, the chance to open up new markets both quickly and cost-effectively.

Verizon is best known as one of the major US mobile services providers, and as a Telco of not insignificant proportions. As a Telco, however, it has also been effectively obliged to build up a back line of datacentre services to meet both its own needs and then the needs of its customers. This was expanded significantly a couple of years ago with the acquisition of established US-based datacentre and cloud services provider, Terramark.

THECALLR, specialisesin cloud-based voice marketing services, integrating voice services with other associated services that help businesses build strong marketing platforms. Based in Paris, the company’s call-tracking and marketing-automation services are targeted at companies that use voice services as a channel to market, for example those in the banking, retail and debt recovery sectors. 

It had historically co-located its IT infrastructure at third-party datacentres in Paris, but as Taoufik Zagdoud, CEO and co-founder of THECALLR, observed, the company found that its rapid growth was being hampered by the inflexibility of this approach, as well as costly and complex to maintain.

“The service was based in two datacentres in Paris, but the company had reached the growth point where its next move was to go global, so we needed to have servers outside of Paris,” he said. “Our first target would be the US, market, followed by South America, then Asia.

“And with all that going on the company just wanted to concentrate on the marketing, sales and management of the growth, rather than have to be concerned with setting up new datacentres in the target markets, or working with local partners.”

Zagdoud and his team started to research possible partners but soon came to realise that Verizon would probably make a good choice, not least because THECALLR had been using Verizon for voice services for some time, so there was an existing relationship between the two.

“We talked to Verizon about its service capabilities in the USA and Europe and, since we trusted them, we decided to use Verizon’s cloud services because we knew they were professional, and because of their knowledge and expertise. We also needed a match in terms of reliability and quality of service,” he said. “The decision to go global meant finding a partner that was also global, and that was Verizon.”

The company started with Verizon in a small way, with what Zagdoud called “only a few VMs”. The plan, however, is that in the near future some 80 percent of its total workload will be running on the Verizon cloud. All new countries the company enters will be totally on Verizon’s cloud.

He acknowledged that this makes the growth plan far easier to manage, for Verizon has the global resources to provide the required services. “Working with them is low maintenance because we already know each other’s business methods. In addition, without Verizon we would need to have two or three expert staff in every region just to manage the service partners, but with Verizon we don’t have to do that, and in fact we don’t want to do that. Verizon already has those experts on the ground.”

It also has other advantages for both parties. For example, he acknowledged that as Verizon is both a Cloud Service Provider and a Telco having THECALLR available close at hand gives it a service that it can resell to its own customers. This gives THECALLR greater early penetration into it new target markets.

The fact that Verizon has coverage in all the markets THECALLR is pitching at also saves money for the company in handling traffic between continents. “If we were working with different partners in different continents it could cost us tons of money just to link them. And Verizon also have multiple carrier deals, so we are not restricted in terms of carriers,” he said.

Verizon delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries and has more than 101 million retail connections in the USA alone. This is the type of service coverage – not just in size but also target users - that maps well onto the needs of a business like THECALLR.