O2 Joins With 2e2 To Form 02 Unify 14/01/11
Posted by Kevin Box on Fri, Jan 14, 2011 @ 04:54 AM
O2 and 2e2 have announced the creation of ‘O2 Unify’, a joint venture that will allow businesses to outsource their IT and communications needs to a single provider.
O2 Unify will launch on 2nd April 2011 to provide mobile and fixed line
telephone and managed data solutions based on the Cloud.
Whilst O2 is a familiar organisation to most people, 2e2 are maybe less well known generally. 2e2 is a predominantly UK focused midsize ICT services provider with a turnover of about £400 million per annum with a portfolio data centres and services.
The joint O2 Unify team will be based in Slough and be supported by a sales force of over 500 people. O2 sees this as driving towards its goal of becoming a communications integrator for business, whereas it would appear 2e2 view it as being an opportunity to make money.
It is interesting that Telefonica who own O2 only registered the URLs - 02Unify.co.uk etc on the 13th of January – the date of the press release launching it. That was a bit of a close call.
I can see the logic of the organisations coming together in what seems to be an O2 show. They are tackling a market which is already dominated by large players with Cable and Wireless and Colt springing immediately to mind.
It is good to see that we still have the capability and desire to do more than simply operate as bankers to the world. This venture seems to have all the hallmarks of success and I wish it well.
With the infrastructure and cost base that the JV will have I don’t think that SME’s will be queuing up to become their first customers and it will be interesting to see how far down market 02 Unify chooses to sail.
Bon voyage!
Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloudnet
Cloudnet is the friendly professional business phone systems company based in Walsall Our team has developed our hosted VoIP phone systems platform and the technology behind it. Cloudnet is the only company to concentrate purely on our Internet based phone systems solution – the switchboard in the sky.
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• Free calls within the network
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