Desktop as a Service Provider Dizzion Makes Inroads into the Channel

Dizzion is a turnkey provider of managed desktop as a service (DaaS) tools. The company prides itself on the security and compliance it provides for a range of organizations and industries. From hotels to banks to health care companies, Dizzion officials say that its DaaS solution offers high-quality voice which sets its business apart from competitors. It’s that distinction that could appeal to partners looking to venture into DaaS offerings.

That’s according to Dizzion’s VP of solution advisors, Brady Ranum. It this interview with Channel Futures, he discusses why partners should embrace DaaS in their solutions portfolio and particularly for the contact center market.

Channel Futures: For those readers not familiar, how do you describe the basics of desktop as a service?

Dizzion’s Brady Ranum

Brady Ranum: Desktop as a service is really the act of taking your desktop or desktop applications and delivering those from the cloud. It doesn’t matter what type of device you have; it could be a phone, it could be a tablet, it could be a desktop computer or laptop computer.

I think there are some recent reports that say 91% of people say that they’re actually going to be more productive if they get to use their device of choice. Also, DaaS allows for a lot of data security, because those applications that you’re working with aren’t on your computer. They’re hosted in the cloud, just like a website would be. We’re doing highly compliant or secure-type use cases where customers want that data contained, to stay in one place. Then they have the controls and encryption so they don’t have to do that on every endpoint device for every user that’s accessing that data.

CF: What makes your desktop-as-a-service offering unique?

BR: There are a few things that make it unique. One, it’s the level of compliance or security that we go to. We take a lot off a customer’s plate there. Two, probably the largest differentiator that we have are our voice and video capabilities. If you think about how the world has changed and gotten completely remote, it’s even more difficult for everybody to have really good voice quality. They might be in lots of different locations. They might be using multiple CCaaS solutions. The ability to deliver voice and good quality video to remote employees really all over the world is what makes us unique.

CF: What is it about DaaS that is advantageous for the contact-center industry?

BR: It’s a great application for the contact center industry. There are several reasons for that. One, you’ve got to have high security. In that context, you’re usually dealing with personal identification information, with credit card information, and maybe health care information as well. So having the security around that data is really important. As we’ve seen the last three years, the contact center is now remote. You want to make sure that not only are you giving users a secure experience, but you’re also getting a great end-user experience by delivering it through DaaS. It allows you to get end users up and running faster and onboarded faster. We’re talking about minutes, not days, not weeks.

CF: What percentage of contact centers are using desktop as a service?

BR: I would say somewhere around 70% of our use cases are contact center. And that is across industries. We’re in a lot of different industries, from the top five banks, the top five hotel and resort establishments, and BPOs. Across all those industries, the No. 1 use case is the contact center.

CF: What do critics say against using desktop as a service?

BR: It’s voice quality. Maybe they’ve used some other solution that wasn’t able to deliver quality voice. For 98% of products out there, critics are right about their discontent. They’re not used to Dizzion’s ability to deliver voice. They just haven’t tried ours yet.

CF: I’m curious as to why we haven’t seen desktop as a service as prominent as it could be in the channel.

BR: I think it might be …

… for the same reason I just mentioned. If I don’t have a good DaaS solution that offers quality voice, even though it brings so many different advantages, it’s not going to be appealing. I think if more and more folks can see and experience and even talk to our customers, they’ll see the difference.

Also, we love the partner community; we’ve worked with quite a few partners. Once they are shown the advantages of the offering, they become evangelists for our company. As far as expanding our partner program, we’re are continuing to hire more people to also increase our white glove service.

CF: Can I ask what percentage of your business is comprised of the channel when it comes to revenue?

BR: I think it’s larger than 50% of our business that comes through the channel.

CF: To what extent does compliance play in your business model?

BR: It seems like everybody, no matter what industry they’re in, has some kind of compliance requirements. But not all companies have deep skilled compliance and security folks. So if a company can outsource both of those things and do it confidently, that’s the ideal situation. Dizzion provides that to allow our partners not only to come away with great quality voice but to meet compliance needs as well. It’s a huge load off of a company’s corporate IT department.

In addition, we get audited by third parties continuously. Not only do our customers audit us, but we have third parties to review our HIPAA high tech, high trust products, for example.

CF: Where do you hope to see the technology go regarding innovation in the next year to five years?

BR: We have several announcements we’re making in the next few weeks that I have to keep under wraps. However, as for the outlook, we’re trying to make it so a person can use a lower-end device, or a cheaper device … something a call center worker would have readily available at home. That means that endpoint device must be more capable. Just a couple of years ago, there was a shortage on hardware. If you can utilize older devices, those that a contact center worker might have at home, this opens the labor pool for remote workers. Companies can still keep that high experience level. These are the technologies we’re working on.