Kurmi Updates

Kurmi Software, the award-winning UC provisioning platform for enterprise collaboration, today announced the appointment of Dessi Schachne as Global Vice President of Marketing. Schachne, is based in the New York office, joining Kurmi North America’s growing team which has doubled over last year. She will support the company in its international expansion and raise its profile in the Unified Communications and Collaboration space.

Schachne’s appointment supports Kurmi’s global expansion acceleration, strengthening its presence in North America now representing more than 50% of its global revenue, as well as its home base region of EMEA, with a customer base across more than 20 countries. She is highly experienced in the marketing sector, with a long history of delivering substantial revenue growth and customer acquisition for providers of digital products and services, including SaaS and on-premise solutions.

Schachne, who joins Kurmi’s Executive Committee, contributing to its globalization, will lead the company’s marketing initiatives and will be instrumental in promoting Kurmi’s brand. She will oversee global and regional planning, development, and execution of Kurmi’s strategic, product marketing, and demand generation programs.

“Dessi is joining Kurmi in what is undoubtedly a significant time for our company bringing her expertise to contribute to making the company the global leader in UC Management”, said Pascal Moindrot, COO at Kurmi Software. “I am positive that she will be a great fit and we will see the benefit of the talents and insights she has acquired throughout her career.”

Dessi Schachne

Global VP Marketing

“The Kurmi Software team has built an incredible platform, delivering UC provisioning automation for enterprises and service providers around the world, a service that has never been more critical for businesses success in today’s complex communications landscape,” said Schachne. “I am excited to be joining this talented team and look forward to helping write the next chapters in the Kurmi journey.”

Schachne received her BS in Business and Marketing from City University of Seattle and is a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Kurmi Software, the leading UC provisioning platform for enterprise collaboration, has joined the Cisco SolutionsPlus Program to extend the global availability of its solutions across Cisco’s channel ecosystem. Through this membership, Kurmi is now the exclusive UC management provider on the Cisco’s Global Price List, making it easy for Cisco customers to purchase the solution directly from one source.

The Cisco SolutionsPlus program makes it easier for businesses to find and purchase compatible solutions which meet specific business needs. In a market dealing with increasing complexity across multiple solutions, on-premises, in the cloud or in hybrid environments, simplification is increasingly important for Cisco’s customers. Kurmi is an important addition to the Cisco catalog, offering enterprises an award-winning platform, and a robust and scalable way to manage this complexity via a single user interface.

Kurmi’s highly flexible configurability and robust scalability allows customers of Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning (PCP) to easily transition out of the sunsetting program and adopt its solution.

Pascal Moindrot, COO, Kurmi Software says, “Many of our customers come to us wanting a turnkey replacement for Cisco Prime Collaboration Provisioning. We help IT administrators with a number of capabilities from workflow automation, reporting, role-based access control, zero-touch provisioning and support for Webex Suite and Contact Center. With our help, UC features and apps are easier to deploy, administer and delegate, saving time and generating faster and more significant ROI.”

“Cisco and Kurmi have been working together over a decade. Since we have discontinued our Prime Collaboration Provisioning offering, we are delighted to integrate even more closely with their best-in-class product suite,” says Wade Hamblin, Director of Product Management at Cisco. “Kurmi Software Suite was an obvious choice for the SolutionsPlus program, as it offers robust and scalable management of both on-premise and cloud architectures, and thereby supports our cloud strategy allowing our customers to migrate at their pace.”

The Cisco SolutionsPlus membership will see existing Cisco PCP customers migrate to Kurmi’s more modern and scalable platform, while giving them the flexibility to add additional capabilities from the Cisco stack. Kurmi has been shown to reduce Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) management costs by up to 80% and is highly configurable to match customer specific requirements and integration with third party applications.

“Being selected by Cisco to be the only SolutionsPlus partner to help simplify the day-to-day provisioning of UC and Contact Center solutions is a huge privilege for us and demonstrates the level of trust in our well-established relationship,” continued Moindrot. “UC environments have become so vital to businesses over the past two years as has the need to easily manage and control them. This partnership will offer Cisco PCP users the continuity and flexibility they need when managing their UC environments, as well as giving them access to the full Kurmi suite, which will be available via the Cisco Global Price List for the first time.”

If you’d like to learn more about Kurmi Software Suite, we’d be happy to schedule a demo with one of our experts.

By Bruno Guirardel, Head of Product, Kurmi

After almost three years of change within the Unified Communications (UC) space, Enterprise Connect 2022, brought together corporate IT decision makers, industry vendors, channel partners, analysts and consultants to focus on the themes and insights currently shaping enterprise communications and collaboration.

As one of the first in-person events in years, there was a plethora of fresh products on show, with vendors trying to outdo each other with new capabilities catering to the hybrid workforce.

The event was paramount in providing a space for UC professionals to communicate in- person, encouraging participants to update their network, build relationships and gain insights around how the UC space has transformed over the past few years…

Hybrid Working is Here to Stay

The main key word of the event was ‘hybrid’ and there was plenty of competition between the main players to see who can provide the best experience for the ‘from anywhere’ workforce, with vendors making various announcements across the conference:

Cisco unveiled the extension of Embedded Apps from the Webex desktop app to include Webex Desk and Webex Board Series devices, as well as announcing new capability in Vidcast and an industry-first partnership with Ford to extend Webex Meetings to vehicles.

At Kurmi, it is vital that we take into account the key themes being addressed by our techno partners, Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Zoom and other market leaders, to ensure our products and features are aligned to new market demands.

For example, an overwhelming topic of the conferences was that in the hybrid world, organisations of all sizes are moving systems onto the cloud. To support the rising demand for cloud services, Kurmi recently launched Kurmi-as-a-Service (KaaS), a solution that offers flexibility in the way our customers choose to licence our solutions, automatically delivering the latest and most up-to-date release of the Kurmi platform, without the IT overhead.

The Evolution of Meeting Experiences

The theme of hybrid work continued throughout the conference, specifically noting the challenge of hybrid meetings, where participants are both in the office and attending virtually.

If you cast your mind back to hybrid conference calls in early 2020, call quality was lower, engagement was more difficult and overall experience was less enjoyable for those joining virtually. However, fast forward to 2022, and we have the reverse situation, as the experience of virtual communication has improved at such an accelerated pace throughout the pandemic, that those joining hybrid meetings remotely, now potentially have a better experience (closer to the camera, better connection, high quality sound and microphones) than those joining in person from a crowded conference room with one speaker and one small camera positioned far away and with limited quality.

Market leaders are focused on finding solutions which improve collaboration for all participants, while facilitating those both onsite and off site. For example, Microsoft announced enhancements for companion devices which makes it easy to join a hybrid meeting from within a conference room, by automatically turning off audio to avoid feedback etc.

Interoperability

Interoperability was the other major theme at the conference, as companies are now working in multi-vendor, multi-platform, hybrid-cloud environments. As organizations add layers of technology to their business processes and systems, it is vital to ensure that solutions can integrate with each other to provide the best possible experience. Going forward, we will see more partnerships and more integrated solutions being deployed in order to provide more options for users, as customers no longer want to rely on only one technology or vendor.

To prepare for the expected growth in multi-vendor UC, IT leaders need solutions to tackle the challenges of provisioning users across multiple apps at scale. That’s why successful businesses looking to reduce waste and increase efficiency turn to Kurmi to streamline deployment, provisioning and day-to-day user management processes easing the transition to the hybrid workplace.

We are excited to be part of such a vibrant and innovative community, solving the biggest UC issues faced by enterprises. For more information about KaaS, please visit our KaaS page.

To find out more about automating your UC services, Contact Us or Book a Demo:

Kurmi Software, the leading UC management and provisioning platform for enterprise collaboration, today launched the Kurmi Advantage Partner (KAP) program. The KAP program offers flexibility and added benefits for channel partners designed to amplify opportunities for its automated Unified Communications (UC) and Contact Center (CC) provisioning solution. It will support the rapid growth of Kurmi in the channel, empowering VARs, systems integrators and delivery consultants with a range of tools to improve paths to growth and faster time to revenue.

Channel partners are a central part of Kurmi’s growth strategy as the company responds to significant demand from large enterprises for simplified and smarter user administration and provisioning automation amidst the growing proliferation and complexity of enterprise collaboration tools.

“Channel partners like working with Kurmi because we offer market versatility,” explains Sylvain Mogade, EMEA and APAC Partnership Manager, Kurmi. “KAP rewards our pioneering partners for their commitment and entices new partners to grow their businesses with Kurmi’s UC management platform, making it easy to do business with us.”

The KAP program reflects the company’s commitment to opening up opportunities for a range of new partner types, supporting them at different stages of the sales and delivery cycle.

Debra Perry, Kurmi’s newly appointed VP Alliances, notes, “Our partners are integral to our growth and customer satisfaction. We are excited today to launch KAP, a program which provides a clear path for partners to expand their service portfolio to current customers and open entirely new business lines.”

The new program provides tiered benefits across four levels of membership (Registered Partner, Business Partner, Premier Business Partner and Technology Partner), which are defined by targets, sales and technical skill sets and customer base. Benefits include a new partner portal, sales and co-marketing support, product discounts, and demo lab licences, in addition to offering support for better paths to growth,and increased customer retention rates and profitability across North America, EMEA, and APAC.

Dale Foster, CEO, Climb Channel Solutions adds, “Our partnership with Kurmi has helped drive growth and uncover new opportunities. We look forward to working even more closely with them to expand the service portfolio we are offering customers in the UC space. The launch of the Kurmi Advantage Partner (KAP) program will ensure we continue jointly driving greater value for our customers to mutually grow our businesses.”

Currently, more than 60 channel and delivery partners work with Kurmi around the world and the company plans to double its channel partners in 2022. Kurmi integrates with the key leading technology platforms, including Avaya, Cisco and Microsoft among other cloud collaboration vendors.

For information about the program and how to become a partner, go to the KAP Program benefits page or email Sylvain Mogade at sylvain.mogade@kurmi-software.com.

For media inqueries contact

Alex Brooks
TUVA
alex.brooks@tuvapartners.com

UC Today featured Kurmi COO, Pascal Moindrot on why the launch of Kurmi as a Service (KaaS) will allow enterprises to cut costs and the number of man-hours spent supporting Unified Communication platforms.

KaaS enables users to benefit from all the existing Kurmi Software features, but with the added flexibility of total cloud management, instantaneous updates, and a predictable upfront monthly cost.

Read the full article

Kurmi Software, the leading service management platform for enterprise collaboration, today launched Kurmi as a Service (KaaS), to deliver simplified provisioning of Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions to enterprises worldwide from the cloud. KaaS pairs all the capabilities of Kurmi’s award-winning on-prem platform with a hosted model, providing faster and easier access to the tools required to streamline and optimize the day-to-day administration of Unified Communication platforms, including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Zoom.

The Unified Communications market is expected to reach $344bn by 2028, according to Research and Markets, driven by digital transformation, a hybrid workforce environment and a surge in enterprise cloud adoption and migration. Accelerated in no small part by the pandemic, a move towards hybrid working has also seen enterprises increasingly looking for flexible and agile management tools that can be delivered in the cloud. Developed to meet this rising demand for UC automation, KaaS accelerates the implementation of UC management and creates an improved customer experience, automatically delivering the latest and most up-to-date release of the platform, without the IT overhead.

KaaS offers a fully transparent and predictable monthly cost model with a range of additional benefits for enterprise customers. With KaaS, the ability to create templates by site or function and set up repeatable processes reduces the amount of time needed to onboard new users by up to 80% and transforms provisioning UC into a fast, one-click activity. Additionally, automated moves, adds, changes, and deletes (MACDs) workflows and processes, including flexible Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and advanced features such as rollback and scheduling means that overburdened IT admin teams can assign day-to-day UC management tasks to employees without advanced technical skills, including helpdesk staff, local administrators, and HR assistants.

KaaS benefits from state-of-the-art data encryption and cloud-based systems maintenance, with security software, removing the need for manual integration or security expertise by automatically keeping up-to-date and compliant with the latest regulations and threats, with all platform management handled by Kurmi. All KaaS users will receive access to the latest Kurmi support for new features from their platform vendors seamlessly and without delay.

“Enterprises are always looking at ways to cut costs and the volume of hours required to support critical UC solutions is a big part of this,” explained Thibaut Felgeres, CEO at Kurmi Software.

“This is why we have developed Kurmi as a Service, to extend the delivery model options for our UC automation services beyond on-premise into the cloud. KaaS enables users to benefit from all the existing Kurmi Software features, but with the added flexibility of total cloud management, instantaneous updates, and a predictable upfront monthly cost.”

Providing an alternative delivery model to Kurmi’s on-premise solution, KaaS will complement the existing Kurmi UC Provisioning suite, giving customers the same user-friendly experience, but with the added flexibility and peace of mind that comes with a SaaS model.

For further information please visit our page.

For more information go to kurmi-software.com or contact-us@kurmi-software.com.

Kurmi Software, the management platform for enterprise collaboration, is exhibiting its range of award-winning software solutions that automate, simplify, and reduce the administration cost and time of Unified Communications and Collaboration services, at Avaya ENGAGE 2021. Taking place between 12-15 December 2021 in Orlando, United States, Avaya ENGAGE is one of the premier industry events bringing together the thought leaders who are shaping the future of communications and collaboration.

With North America’s largest banks, hospitals, universities, and telcos relying on Kurmi Software for simplified, smarter, and automated unified communications and collaboration (UCC) and contact center (CC) management, the company is already answering the call from enterprises challenged with handling user administration at scale. The company recently made key additions to its North American leadership team to address market demand across a range of industry sectors.

Kurmi Software will be exhibiting its powerful, user-centric software suite for simple, customizable, and ultra-scalable management of the market’s leading Unified Communications platforms including Avaya at Booth #123 at the show, taking place at Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. Attendees are encouraged to visit the booth to see the solution in action, in addition to meeting key members of Kurmi Software’s senior executive team including Chief Operating Officer, Pascal Moindrot, and Head of Product, Bruno Guirardel.

“The recent pandemic response has highlighted the need for a re-unification of communications for enterprises struggling to manage complexity, market fragmentation and a lack of automation across platforms and collaboration tools,” explained Pascal Moindrot, Chief Operating Officer, Kurmi Software. “We’re excited to showcase our UCC and CC management solutions that help enterprises address these challenges at one of the world’s top events for the unified communications and collaboration and contact center community.”

To arrange a meeting or demonstration with the Kurmi team, contact Alex Brooks, TUVA Partners.

Kurmi Software has been named the winner of the Best Service Management Platform category in the 4th Annual UC Awards celebration. Hailed as the “UC Industry’s highest honor,” the UC Awards are hosted and presented by UC Today, the leading international news organization honoring excellence across the unified communications and collaboration marketplace.

The UC Awards 2021 ceremony was hosted online by UC Today publisher Rob Scott and TV Tech journalist and author Kate Russell.

Judging was based on a company’s ability to demonstrate innovation, improved experience and execution, led by a panel of respected industry experts including Zeus Kerravala, Irwin Lazar, Blair Pleasant, Tim Banting, Stephanie Watson, Jon Arnold, Melissa Swartz, and Kevin Kieller.

Kurmi delivers an independent, state-of-the-art management platform that both automates and simplifies the administration of Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) solutions through a single pane of glass portal. This approach helps IT make sense of the increasing complexity in enterprise UCC brought on recently by the proliferation of multi-vendor, hybrid, on-prem, and cloud solutions.

“Kurmi Software has set the standard in UC Service Management, a fantastic achievement and very well deserved,” said Rob Scott, publisher and host of UC Awards 2021.

“We are thrilled to receive this honor, especially following the challenges experienced by many IT teams around the world in the past year,” said Thibaut Felgeres, CEO of Kurmi Software. “Kurmi was there to help our enterprise customers when they needed to provision their users to allow work-from-home as the pandemic began, and to do it quickly and efficiently. Moving forward, Kurmi will simplify more day-to-day operations for this new, hybrid working environment. Receiving this award now is all the more inspiring for our team and rewards the strong development of the company.”

Kurmi Software was honored on Thursday, July 29, 2021, at 3 pm GMT. Interested parties can watch the show on-demand.

About UC Awards

Hailed as the “UC Industry’s highest honor,” the UC Awards are hosted and presented by UC Today, the leading international news organization honoring excellence across the unified communications and collaboration marketplace.

UC Awards is a global awards event that celebrates UC and Collaboration Technology, innovation and industry success.

Established in 2018, UC Awards is back for the 4^th year running, with a range of categories for vendors and service providers.

UC Awards 2021 is proudly supported by its headline sponsors BICS and Ribbon Communications.

BICS is a leading international communications enabler, one of the key global voice carriers and the leading provider of mobile data services worldwide. Visit https://www.bics.com/ for more information.

Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN) delivers communications software, IP and optical networking solutions to service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors globally. Visit https://ribboncommunications.com/ for more information.

Let’s take a look at the improvements Kurmi has made to simplify automation with each manufacturer:

Kurmi’s offering the best Cisco integration on the market!

All the Cisco Voice Gateways are now supported on CUCM 11 or higher!

Administrators can manage ports of the following Cisco devices: VG2801, VG2811, VG2821, VG2851, VG3825, VG3845, and VG3945E.

With Kurmi, administrators can declare Cisco servers, CUCM, and Unity Connection in the Cisco HCM-F.

They can assign the Cisco Headset Template to Cisco User Profiles.

The new Cisco license lets the end-user use Webex Teams in place of Jabber. Webex Teams, connected to our CUCM, is a new softphone for Cisco.

Assign “CUCM Calling” licenses to Webex users. Without any additional development, our Webex connector is compatible with new features offered by Cisco.

Tweaks to Avaya:

Administrators can manage Avaya Media Files on the Avaya Media Server. The SOAP API is used for this new connector.

Administrators can manage Avaya Communication Profile Set through the System Manager API. The Kurmi data model will be changed with this feature.

Communication Profiles: Communication Profiles support communication interactions through Avaya Communication Services. Communication Profiles can be CM Endpoint, Messaging, OfficeLinx, Session Manager, CS 1000, CallPilot Messaging, IP Office, Presence, Avaya Breeze™, Conferencing, or Equinox Conferencing.

Administrators can manage Avaya Communication Addresses through System Manager API.

Avaya Communication Addresses: A user may have one or more Communication Profiles for registering one or more SIP user handles (phone extensions) to the Session Manager. This will enable users to set up (optionally) an origination and termination application sequence as their preferred call-routing method.

To register an SIP phone with Session Manager, at least one Communication Profile must be administered containing the Session Manager’s details and at least one SIP-type Communication Address must be defined. Handles can also be matched to a Communication Manager station and/or messaging subscriber.

A communication address can be used to communicate with the contact. This can be the contact’s phone number, e-mail address, SIP, or IM. One or more communication addresses are defined for the user in relation to the handle plus domain in userinfo@domainpart format when routing a communication interaction to the user.

Microsoft keeps adding features!

Administrators can manage Microsoft Teams Call Queues and assign users to them using Kurmi Services. Four new services have been added to cover this. Call queues provide a method of routing callers to people in your organization who can help with a particular issue or question.
Microsoft Meeting Rooms can now be managed (set up) without activating full Exchange management.
Administrators can assign the Teams IP Phone policy and Teams Mobility policy to Microsoft Teams through the Kurmi web portal.
A pool of service accounts lets you remove the limit of three PowerShell sessions. To solve this problem, Kurmi has set up a service account pool for Microsoft 365 management. Systems administrators can define several service accounts to manage one Microsoft tenant.

Release 7.4.0 expands the features managed by Kurmi and provides a better administrator experience, with upgraded UI and UX.

This UI/UX upgrade includes better hierarchy pop-up ergonomics and an all-new “My Account” page for administrators. It also displays more information before deletion. It’s more flexible, so you can customize the Kurmi Services listing pages.

The ergonomics for “My IP Phone Login Service” on Kurmi Unified Selfcare are all new for Cisco users.

The self-service portal’s menu and buttons are more accessible. We’ve improved ergonomics for “slow” pages, and your ability to export files using asynchronous features, resulting in better performance.