Telecom
Sophos Deepens Commitment to Customers & Channel Partners, Unveils Dedicated Customer Success Team
Sophos, a global leader of innovative security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, is expanding its commitment to customers and channel partners with the launch of Sophos Customer Success. The new program features a team of experts who support customers throughout their post-sales experience with ongoing security resources and alerts, webinars and other educational information about cyberattacks, such as ransomware and data breaches.
Sophos Customer Success also provides guidance on how organizations can maximize their current investment and expand their strategic defenses with other layers of Sophos’ portfolio solutions, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, and endpoint, network, email, and cloud security.
Sophos Customer Success experts work hand-in-hand with Sophos’ channel partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), augmenting support services already available to customers.
Specifically, Sophos Customer Success provides a Sophos trusted advisor to help customers with everything from onboarding to scaling investments for each organization’s unique and growing ecosystem to best defend against ever-changing cyberattacks.
This dedicated support ensures customers have a unified point of contact who can quickly address questions and share relevant and contextual threat intelligence for a cohesive and consistent experience that fosters best cybersecurity practices.
“Following the successful launch of Sophos’ Partner Care earlier this year, we saw an industry-leading opportunity to deliver a similar level of ‘white glove’ service directly to our customers,” said Angela Bucher, vice president of Customer Success, Sophos.
“By creating a single point of contact for customers, we’re able to work more seamlessly to improve customer satisfaction on many levels. This ‘close touch’ availability also helps partners and MSPs better protect and service their customers.
“We will work closely together to help customers tap into the full breadth of security capabilities in their existing investment, as well as add-on and integrate other solutions in Sophos’ portfolio.”
The Sophos Customer Success team features two levels of service – a high-touch approach and a tech-touch approach. The high-touch approach involves personalized, hands-on engagement with customers, typically suited for organizations with complex requirements. The tech-touch engagement is more automated and scalable to support partners and MSPs with a larger volume of customers with standardized processes.
“This team empowers partners to better understand customers’ knowledge about their products and services in deployment and delivers the insights partners need to pinpoint opportunities for scaling with customers,” said Sam Heard, president at Data Integrity Services, a Sophos channel partner.
“Sophos Customer Success has been an excellent extension of our partnership with the company – strengthening our customers’ security postures and elevating client satisfaction to new heights.”
More information about Sophos Customer Success is available at Sophos.com.
Telecom
MTN, Accenture Conclude OpenRAN Trial as It Eyes Network Shift
MTN Group and Accenture have concluded a proof-of-concept OpenRAN trial that the two companies co-developed.
According to a statement by Accenture on Wednesday, trials of the solution were conducted on MTN’s network in South Africa and Nigeria.
“An initial trial phase exploring OpenRAN solutions was conducted in MTN South Africa’s lab, prior to the live site deployment,” said Nitesh Singh, communication, media and technology leader at Accenture.
“This project provided us with an opportunity to share our experience with MTN through the Rakuten communications platform, and to jointly create the next-generation network that will set new standards for future mobile communications in South Africa and across the continent.”
OpenRAN standards are developed by two main industry bodies, the O-RAN Alliance and the Telecom Infra Project
Operators around the world are experimenting with OpenRAN architectures as these would help decouple the components in the parts of the network connecting a user’s device to the nearest tower, preventing vendor lock-in and potentially reducing costs.
OpenRAN standards are developed by two main industry bodies, the O-RAN Alliance and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).
The O-RAN Alliance was founded by five companies – AT&T, Orange, NTT Docomo, China Mobile and Deutsche Telekom – and has the most comprehensive body of OpenRAN standards available.
Telecom Infra Project members include operators as well as service providers, technology partners, systems integrators and other stakeholders, including Intel and Facebook.
OpenRAN technology has seen significant boosts in investment in the US following allegations by US officials that Chinese radio equipment manufacturer Huawei places backdoors and spyware into its networking kit, allegations the company has strenuously denied.
The US and EU have subsequently banned Huawei equipment from mobile networks in the two regions, exacerbating the need for open standards in the access network.
“MTN is committed to exploring innovative technological solutions to reduce the costs and deliver greater value to our customers. We are confident that in time, OpenRAN holds the potential to allow us to lower the total cost of ownership … and unlock the benefits of cloud-native deployments with greater flexibility and scalability,” said Amith Maharaj, technology executive for MTN Group
Telecom
Starlink Boosts Traffic for Rural Nigerian Cell Sites 45 Percent – AMN
Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) has said that it has connected more than 100 rural base stations in Nigeria to Starlink’s LEO satellite network, which has resulted in a 45% boost in traffic on those sites.
AMN and SpaceX signed a commercial deal in July 2023 under which Starlink would provide satellite backhaul connectivity for AMN’s remote base stations across Africa.
The first AMN base station in Nigeria was fitted with a Starlink terminal in April this year in the rural village of Yebu.
Since then, over 100 base stations in other villages have been connected to Starlink, and AMN said in a statement it expects to double that number before the end of the year.
AMN said that traffic has increased by approximately 45% across all sites using Starlink backhaul, and that some sites are processing more than 25,000 voice minutes per day.
AMN also partly credited the traffic boost at those sites to its software-defined AMN Radio Node (ARN) technology, which enables the base stations to support up to five simultaneous carriers in either 2G+3G or 2G+4G configurations.
The combination of software-defined ARNs and LEO satellite backhaul enables AMN to boost base station capacity remotely with no change to the existing hardware on the site, AMN said.
Telecom
SeerBit, Zoho Partner to Simplify Payments for African Businesses
SeerBit, Africa’s trusted payment solutions provider has announced a strategic partnership with Zoho, a global technology company that provides cloud-based business software, to unlock growth for businesses across Africa.
To scale their offerings and drive growth, businesses need to effortlessly manage and receive payments from their customers in Africa.
Consequently, SeerBit noted that the partnership marks a significant advancement in simplifying financial transactions for businesses in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and other African countries who are utilizing Zoho Books.
Zoho Books is a comprehensive cloud-based accounting software that helps businesses take care of their finance, perform core accounting functions, and day-to-day book-keeping.
This key integration leverages SeerBit’s robust payment infrastructure to empower users of Zoho Books with seamless and secure payment solutions to help businesses collect payments online from their customers.
Furthermore, this partnership will enable businesses to enhance customer experience and drive growth through relevant payment options such as card, mobile money and bank transfer.
Founder & CEO of SeerBit, Omoniyi Kolade, expressed delight with the recent partnership, stating: “Our collaboration with Zoho represents a significant step in our mission to simplify payment processes for businesses in Nigeria. Of critical importance to us is ensuring that we empower businesses to achieve their primary goals – satisfying the needs of customers without the hassles of payment complexities.
“This epitomises our shared commitment to innovation and customer-centricity. We are shaping the landscape for payment processing for SaaS platforms within the African business space, while providing businesses with the tools they need to thrive in today’s dynamic digital landscape.”
Equally significant, the strategic partnership between SeerBit and Zoho ensures the availability of reliable payment solutions integrated with essential business tools and software. This collaboration empowers users to scale their enterprises efficiently at the speed of commerce and technology.
SeerBit is a Pan-African payment solutions provider that makes it easier for businesses and financial service providers to make and accept payments from their customers across Africa. Users have the advantage of enjoying flexible features to fit any business with a single integration.
The company is building a unified payment ecosystem that removes the complexity and fragmentation of the digital payment process in Africa, enabling businesses to seamlessly accept multiple payment methods and streamline online and offline transactions.
With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, from customer experience and employee experience to enterprise collaboration, custom solutions, and business intelligence, Zoho Corporation is one of the world’s most prolific technology companies.
Headquartered in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 15,000 employees. Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security.
More than 100 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself.
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