London: O2 today announces that Azzurri Communications, a leading independent managed service provider has become a strategic partner. Azzurri will help to deliver services to customers as part of 02’s Centre of Excellence programme.
The new relationship means that Azzurri’s customers will benefit from additional resources, support and access to the latest propositions such as the iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry smartphones. The O2 Centre of Excellence programme is open to partners who pass qualifying criteria including customer service and proficiency in business mobile solutions.
As part of the agreement, Azzurri will manage a base of directly acquired O2 customers and Azzurri’s and O2’s corporate sales teams will become more closely aligned. Azzurri will be committing its mobile focus almost entirely to O2, relinquishing its other direct network relationships.
Established in 2000, Azzurri Communications has rapidly become the UK’s leading managed service company offering integrated voice, data, and mobile services.
Ben Dowd, Business Sales Director, said: ‘We are delighted to welcome Azzurri as an O2 partner. Azzurri have already demonstrated their capability by securing the largest corporate win ever within the partner channel and we look forward to winning more in this space. Our Centre of Excellence partners continue to set the benchmark in the UK and have access to increased investment from O2.’
‘Our business is continuing to evolve. As we move from being purely a mobile brand to a leading connectivity service brand we want to partner with the best people and this announcement is another big part of that plan. We are dedicated to evolving the Centre of Excellence principles ensuring we involve all our partners in this process through an open dialogue. We believe it is only through these true partnerships that our channel solutions will succeed.’
Gordon Matthew, Chief Executive Officer for Azzurri Communications said: ‘We’ve made an important decision to align our business strategically with O2 in order to underpin our mobility offering. Our focus is entirely on ensuring our customers can be as agile and as efficient as possible and we believe O2’s network coverage, product strategy and vision are the most compelling of all the UK mobile operators, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. As leaders in the mobile space, with over 21 million customers I believe we are going to be working with a winning team. Their market leading retention figures, and extremely low churn rate proves that putting customers first gets results.
Matthew continues: ‘O2’s credibility, brand presence and scale combined with Azzurri’s expertise in delivering business efficiency through technology and managed services represent a very strong proposition for this sector.’
ENDS
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