Global Partner Conference 2022 

Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s annual Global Partner Conference was held virtually across the world on February 24 2022. This annual event provides a chance for global partners to reconnect and share the latest discussions on innovations, sales strategy, and business development. It also provides us with an opportunity to congratulate Global Partners on their successes.

2022’s event was hosted by the Head of Global Sales and Marketing, Ahed Alkhatib, but began with a special keynote address from Ericsson-LG Enterprise CEO, Patrick Johansson. Patrick congratulated partners on their success in what was a challenging 2021 and introduced the theme of 2022’s event, Imagine Possible. Patrick explained that this year Ericsson-LG Enterprise has been looking to the future, from cloud, to SaaS models.

Patrick also addressed some of the business highlights that iPECS saw in 2021. These included cloud growth and new innovations such as iPECS ONE and iPECS Analytics, as well as efforts to tackle the year’s major challenges, such as the global component shortage.

Attendees heard from some key speakers from Ericsson-LG Enterprise, such as our new Head of Operations, Jaeen Yoo. Jaeen gave insight into how Ericsson-LG Enterprise are responding to the feedback raised by our Global Partners. This included agile new feature delivery and quicker diagnostics and resolutions. Jaeen was followed by HM Lee, Head of PLM, who introduced some of the exciting innovations that will come to the iPECS product portfolio in 2022.

Ahed then took time to welcome a variety of new Global Partners to the iPECS family from all corners of the globe, with fantastic new partners in South-East Asia receiving a special mention.

Ahed led attendees through how iPECS is powering growth across the business world. We are focusing our strategy and investing in a cloud and on-premise portfolio that can take advantage of faltering competition. iPECS’s continued dedication to cloud transformation has led to some outstanding success stories, and this will be compounded in 2022 with increased product and marketing support.

Ahed was keen to thank partners for their attendance: “I’d like to thank this group of partners who have expertly navigated this challenging environment with us, and we’re very grateful for your continued support and partnership.”

Global Partner Awards Ceremony

The next part of the GPC 2022 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. Despite the awards being hosted online, there was a serious sense of anticipation ahead of the awards.

The first set of awards were dedicated to some of 2021’s best performing resellers from around the world. Despite a difficult year, many teams rose to the challenge and deserved commendation.

2021 saw an even greater push towards cloud adoption and digital transformation. With the GPC’s theme Imagine Possible and our dedication to this technology, it was important to recognize the teams that made the biggest advancements in this field. It was Pragma Distribution who picked up the award for Cloud Partner of the Year.

Presence Management from the US won Digital Transformation Partner of the Year for their work on emergency and child safety solutions.

Although 2021 was a challenging year, many of our global partners saw some fantastic growth. In this field one stood above the rest though and that was Greece’s Blue Technologies IKE, who won the Best Growth Award.

The hospitality industry bounced back in 2021, but securing high value contracts in this field is still challenging. We commended Israel’s Bezeq International for their work bringing iPECS services to hotels across Israel with the Best Partner of the Year, Hospitality Award.

We believe it is incredibly important to highlight the unsung heroes of the communications industries, so this year’s Technical Team of the Year Award went to two different teams. The first was Aria Technologies, for their work implementing Unified 5.0. An award also went to Pragma Distribution for their team’s work introducing iPECS Analytics and their continued work on iPECS Cloud.

We also wanted to recognize service providers in this year’s awards. Our Service Provider of the Year award went to Telkom South Africa, launching iPECS Cloud in their market.

2021 also saw the arrival of many new partners to the iPECS family. We handed New Partner of the Year awards to PT Damai Sejati (ITComm) in Indonesia and Tele Dynamics Global Com in Malaysia.

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: 

European Partner of the Year: Promelit Communication System (Italy)

Middle East & Africa Partner of the Year: Bezeq International Ltd. (Israel)

Americas Partner of the Year: Presence Management (USA)

Asia Pacific Partner of the Year: Aria Technologies Australia (Australia)

Finally, Patrick Johansson announced the prestigious Global Partner of the Year Award. In 2022 this award was as hotly contest as ever, but it was Pragma Distribution who were awarded the prize. Pragma’s successful year and continued innovation in the cloud communications market made them more than deserving winners.

Pragma’s Managing Director Tim Brooks was thrilled to receive the award for the fourth year running. He gave his thanks to the dedication of the Pragma team on their 10^th anniversary year:

“The journey that we’ve been over this last ten years from a start-up business back in 2012, to where we are today as a fully-fledged UCaaS provider in an incredibly competitive market just makes us all burst with pride. I’d like to dedicate this award to our incredible talented and hardworking team here at Pragma. Will, Grace and I are really proud of each and every one of them.”

While not every team walked away with an award at the ceremony, it was a fantastic occasion for everyone involved. We can’t wait for next year’s event and are looking forward to hopefully seeing our partners again face-to-face in 2023. 

If you have any questions, please contact us at ipecs.partner@ericsson.com.