Global Partner Conference 2023

Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s annual Global Partner Conference was held between March 7^th and 10^th, 2023. This was the first in-person GPC event hosted since the pandemic. After more than two years away, it provided a fantastic opportunity for partners to reconnect, share the latest innovations, and host lively discussions.

GPC 2023 event was also the first Partner Conference held in our home city of Seoul. During the event, we heard from senior members of the Ericsson-LG Enterprise team, as well as many of our partners, on the future of iPECS and the new opportunities for business development.

The event began with a keynote address from Ericsson-LG Enterprise CEO, Patrick Johansson. Patrick welcomed partners to the event and expressed his and the iPECS team’s excitement about the first in-person event for 3 years. Patrick introduced the theme of GPC 2023’s conference, #FutureTogether. This theme matched our vision for iPECS in 2023, with our goal of looking ahead to a fantastic year, backed by a winning portfolio, awesome partners, and a great team.

Global Head of Sales and Marketing, Ahed Alkhatib, was next to speak. Ahed echoed Patrick’s sentiments about how great it was to have global partners all in one place again. Ahed spoke about how iPECS continues to break industry trends by continuing to support both our cloud and on-premise offering globally. This move is designed around supporting future growth. While legacy vendors are struggling to adapt, iPECS has remained committed to innovation since the start. In 2023 this will continue with the power of iPECS Cloud being unleashed through our API.

The next speaker global partners heard from was Head of International Sales, Yuno Jung. Yuno covered the business highlights of 2022. Despite a challenging global landscape, the iPECS global network delivered huge success during the year. iPECS Cloud saw an exceptional performance. Cloud has seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40%, with Pragma continuing to lead the cloud journey with 35% year-on-year growth.

Ahed spoke next, highlighting the importance of global partners maintaining a complete portfolio. While on-premise is still an important part of any iPECS offering, the market is moving toward a SaaS model. As highlighted by Patrick Watson from Cavell Group, Ahed re-iterated that despite new competition from giants like Microsoft, 90% of MS Teams customers still look to 3^rd party experts for their telephony and integrated services. The market is changing, but the knowledge across the iPECS network will help us rise to these new challenges.

Jaeen Yoo, Head of Operations, and HM Lee, Head of PLM, then discussed innovations and the industry trends of 2023. Jaeen reiterated the importance of cloud, especially with hybrid working showing no signs of slowing down. 2023 marks 10 years of iPECS Cloud, from its development in 2013, to 2016’s UK launch and finally to 2023, where iPECS Cloud is seeing 40% year on year growth, and 100% uptime. HM took time to spotlight new features arriving in iPECS Cloud’s phase 5 and 6 updates, as well as new developments for iPECS ONE.

HM followed this with a presentation on the iPECS roadmap for 2023, including a range of exciting features and upgrades set to be released throughout the year.

The next speaker was Seokwon Lee, who took time to discuss the evolution of communication from services like ISDN and VoIP, to new UCaaS and XaaS platforms. Seokwon put a particular focus on the advancement of the API and SDK and its importance for future development.

Next, speakers from Ericsson-LG Enterprise and Global partners from 4 continents came together for an informative and engaging panel on how the communications market is evolving, the challenges we face, and advice on how we can tackle them together.

The panel was followed by guest speaker Kevin Butler, CEO of Vertical Communications. Kevin led an inspiring presentation on how to use failure to achieve success, and how iPECS solutions can help businesses to achieve three key business challenges:

generating new business.
the slowing growth curve of cloud after an initial boom.
monetizing channel partners.

The next guest speaker was Richard Knight, Sales and Marketing Director of UK-based software developer, cosoft. Richard led a session on how cosoft is leading the way in unleashing the power of iPECS through our API. This included integrations with artificial intelligence chatbots, to enhance customer experience.

The final session of the day was hosted by Ahed and Will Morey, CEO of Pragma, who have spearheaded the launch of iPECS Cloud in the UK since 2016. Ahed and Will looked back at the success of Pragma, and how they overcame key challenges during their cloud implementation. Will underlined his thoughts that being a channel-only business is key to building trust and creating successful relationships, and highlighted the partnership between Ericsson-LG Enterprise and Pragma.

The next part of the GPC was about sharing the successes of Global Partners around the world. First Ahed congratulated some of the highest achieving global resellers from around the world. 2023’s winning resellers included:

Advantage Communication + Data
Alcom Voice and Data
BDR Group
CDM Australia
Cloud-U Telecoms
Dabbicco telecomunicazioni
Dynacom Ltd
Focus Group (UK)
Hii Communications Limited
Insync Technology Co., Ltd.
Lily
Mach 3 Group
NEO T&C
NETSER Group
Norma Telecom S.A
OMEGA Enterprise Services Sp. z o.o.
Santel S.A.
Teltrac Communications
Vertel
Yellowcom

The iPECS Reseller of the Year was awarded to three partners as well. This was a new award to recognize the best of best resellers from global.

Yellowcom
CDM Australia
Insync Technology Co., Ltd.

Following these awards, it was time to recognize the best and brightest teams from all over the globe with the regional awards. The winners here were:

Technical Team of the Year: Aria Technologies Australia
Technical Team of the Year: Pragma
Service Provider Partner of the year: Telkom Business
New Partner of the Year: Inspur Communication Technology
Best Partner of the Year – Hospitality: Bezeq International Tech
Best Growth: Tele Dynamics Global Com Sdn Bhd
Digital Transformation Partner of the year: Vertical Communications
Enterprise Partner of the year: Atlas Gentech NZ Limited
Collaboration Partner of the year: Promelit Communication Systems Srl
Cloud Partner of the year: Pragma