Ooma Rolls Out Inaugural Partner Program, Focuses On Recruiting

**Editor’s Note: Click here for a list of July’s important channel-program changes you should know.**

CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION — Ooma (Booth D39), a smart communications platform for small businesses and consumers, on Monday launched its new Office Partner Program at Channel Partners Evolution in Washington D.C.

This is Ooma’s first partner program. VARs can earn commission, residual and product margin by promoting and selling the company’s Ooma Office small business phone system. Ooma also is introducing an affiliate program that pays commission to partners for sales leads that ultimately result in new Ooma Office customers.

Tim Sullivan, Ooma’s vice president of sales, tells Channel Partners his company has worked with partners on an individual basis, “but we never really established or focused a big outreach on recruiting partners, MSPs, etc.”

“We think we’ve got a great structure set up for them, competitive compensation and a great product,” he said. “That was the most important thing for us. We launched this product in 2013 and not surprisingly there was a little bit of growing pains and we learned quite a bit in the last three years. But now I think we’re ready to take the big leap into the channel.”{ad}

Resellers get access to Ooma’s online Partner Portal that provides customizable marketing materials, webinars and training guides, support documentation and access to Ooma reps for customized orders and deal support.

“Up to now, we’ve been very focused at the very small micro businesses using analog phones and an on-premises device,” Sullivan said. “And the question we get more often than not is ‘do you have IP phones, can I set up on my network,’ and the answer was ‘no’ at the time. But we just launched three IP phones and we have more in the pipeline. So now we’ve got analog phones, IP phones, and we have a pretty strong mobile app and mobile capabilities. So we feel we’ve got three legs of a pretty strong service offering to the end user.”

The Ooma Office Partner Program is being rolled out across the United States on a state-by-state basis to qualified resellers and affiliates, and also operates across all of Canada.