This year was my first time attended the Telstra Vantage Expo and it exceeded my expectations.
I have to say the coming 12 months looks to be a very exciting time to be an ICT Business Development Manager. Just over 20 years ago I first started with Telstra and I remember my trainer saying to me “a phone is not just a phone.” This has always resonated with me and once again this statement has come front of mind. Back then, she was right; However, today this is an understatement.
Telstra is no longer fundamentally about phones, they are a Technology company that touches nearly every aspect of our lives and most of us don’t even know it.
Vantage has only scraped the surface and has shown how much our industry has grown.
We are currently in the midst of a major technology overhaul with the removal of copper networks and the expansion of fibre technologies throughout our country. This has opened the door to new ways of doing business fitter and faster, and access to products that give empowerment to the end user to have more control over their business.
Exploring the Vendors
Below, I explore a few of the Vendors who attended this years Vantage and what they had to say about their products.
Exltech tell us that they provide next-generation solutions and streamlined processes to partners, ensuring an unmatched customer experience and lightning quick order fulfillment. Unified Workspace is the office of the future. They claim that they can remove the dependency on costly and unnecessary hardware and replace it with a Samsung DEX environment, simplifying and mobilising the user environment.
Fuel Tax Calculator (FTC) manager was the focus of the Teletrac Navman stand. Teletrac Navman, a leader in fleet management and navigation, offers FTC Manager, a revolutionary fuel tax credit calculator and claimer.
It utilises highly accurate GPS location data to track vehicle activity – on and off the public road network. It automatically calculates off-road fuel consumption, idle time, and auxiliary fuel use for high fuel tax rebates and ROI.
FTC Manager simplifies fuel tax credit claims with the ATO and maximises claim value with full transparency and auditability.
Fortinet delivers high-performance network security solutions that protect your network, users, and data from continually evolving threats. Their broad portfolio of top-rated solutions and centralised management enables security consolidation and delivers a simplified, end-to-end security infrastructure.
Liberate unifies desk phones and mobiles in a single solution to simplify and enhance communications between teams and customers. Since call integration happens in the network, there’s an effortless handover between mobile and landline calls. The mobile phone’s flexible UC features bring the best of your office phone with you wherever you go.
The team from Cisco Meraki didn’t disappoint, they have taken network management from a centralised dashboard to a new level. The team demonstrated how easily the product is used to identify issues, control traffic and manage everyday network issues.
Business SIP
I had the opportunity to speak with account executives who share the front line with Telstra Partners.
The most talked-about topic was business SIP. NBN deployment is well underway, with a sizable portion of the population now connected. As a result, legacy technologies such as ISDN2, ISDN10, and Argent services are being phased out.
Using Business SIP has greatly improved our capacity to aid customers in making the switch off of PSTN and ISDN. Future-proofing, adaptability, scalability, operating expense intelligence, cost certainty, and an intuitive interface are just a few of the advantages.
I look forward to sharing this product with many of my existing customers.
I will be making Telstra Vantage an annual event for myself.
