Telstra unveils Connected Workplace
Telstra has unveiled details of its Connected Workplace product aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, integrating fixed and mobile applications and messaging services in a single offering.
The product will be "very, very significant in the transformation of small to medium businesses", CEO Andy Penn said during the Telstra Vantage 2018 keynote in Melbourne on Wednesday morning.
Outgoing group executive of Telstra Enterprise Brendon Riley detailed the offering, saying Telstra has spent the last year building a new technology stack.
"I can honestly say that in the B2B side of the business, we haven't invested much in technology probably for 10 years. So to stand up a new stack and then be able to announce our first new all-digital solution here at Vantage is very exciting," Riley, who will become CEO of Telstra's spun-off InfraCo, said during the keynote.
The products have been separated into the two categories of office workers and mobile workers. The former category includes unlimited voice, video, and collaboration; internet data; managed private network; and internet protection for web and mail services.
For mobile workers, Connected Workplace includes unlimited calls and text; FairPlay data; and device management.
Telstra then includes the add-ons of Office 365, Workplace Wi-Fi, a range of devices, and bandwidth boosts.
Must read: Telstra2022: Key takeaways from Telstra's new strategy
"It's a simple, pay-per-user, pay-per-month, flexible construct for small to medium business. It's digitally ordered, you can track the order digitally through the process, it's digitally provisioned, you'll get a digital PDF built," Riley explained.
"You can obviously go on to change and reconfigure number of users in real time. We've got a big team building this, not because it's all about connected workplace, but it's all of the componentry that we need to digitise and bring to life all of our products."
The Connected Workplace app will also be able to do incident management, order tracking, and real-time network performance information, and will be adding live chat in a few weeks, Riley added.
While the product won't launch commercially until before Christmas, Telstra currently has around 100 customers already using Connected Workplace on a trial basis.
"We're creating it with customers -- if it doesn't pass the customer test, the features don't get released into Connected Workplace," he said.
Riley had first announced the Connected Workplace during the unveiling of the Telstra 2022 strategy in June, saying that Telstra has been curating and acquiring IP for a "new digital stack and technology base".
"We have connected workplace in minimum viable product," Riley said at the time.
"It is the ability to provide fixed, voice, UC, messaging, with add-ons for mobile and applications ... it will be all-digital, it will be ordered in minutes, provisioned in minutes to hours, and everything will be built electronically, with the ability for the customer to flex up and down in volume in real time."
Disclosure: Corinne Reichert travelled to Telstra Vantage 2018 in Melbourne as a guest of Telstra
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