As part of its mission to be a communications integrator
of choice rather than a supplier of communications products, O2 UK
has revealed the first three members of its Applications Centre of
Excellence (CoE) scheme which was announced at the end of
2008.
Asavie, Neverfail and Telmap are the Centre’s first official
members and will collaborate on an exclusively basis with a
specialist O2 team, who will support the development and marketing
of
bespoke mobile applications.
The programme will aim to aid the development of Asavie’s secure
mobile access solution AccessMyLan, Neverfail’s business continuity
solutions, and Telmap’s satellite navigation solution Telmap
Navigator.
The CoE programme is designed to
help customers
develop their services . In particular O2 says that the
Applications Centre of Excellence is part of its UK business
strategy to take a more IT-focused approach to corporate and SME
sales. And the company stresses that this measn a suite of
business enabling applciations, such as CRM, and not just
mobile email.
O2 also launched the Enterprise, M2M and Data Centres of
Excellence in 2008 which have all been specifically tailored to the
area of business they cover, and aim to bring together experts in
these areas to offer customers an integrated end-to-end
offering.
“We believe that constant collaboration will help us all move
forward in a challenging market. Asavie, Neverfail and Telmap have
… a shared belief in going the extra mile for our customers.”
Commented Ben Dowd, Business Sales Director, Telefonica O2 UK who
stressed that the time was ripe for moving into managed services.
“We [aim] to drive efficiencies into the application space and
what we can do is take away [customers’] hassles in delivering real
[business] benefits. We are [now] not a technology-led business but
a customer insight-led business. The professional managed services
are built with the capability to deliver based on customer insight.
The timing is now. “