Sangoma's Hybrid Communication Success

Jeremy Wubs, the COO of Sangoma, met with Telarus CEO Adam Edwards about Sangoma\’s technology and growth opportunities. Impressed by the passionate people and engineering capabilities, Jeremy decided to join Sangoma after getting to know the leadership team and the technology.
Sangoma has acquired eleven companies in the past fifteen years, focusing on improving customer service and back-office systems. The company\’s core focus is on a hybrid UCaaS platform designed for high reliability in cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, targeting sectors like healthcare and government. Sangoma\’s go-to-market strategy prioritizes partners and emphasizes success in the hybrid communication space.

Introduction and Joining Sangoma

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining today. My guest is Jeremy Wubs chief operating officer of Sangoma. Jeremy, welcome.

Welcome. Thank you very much.

Listen. I want I want to talk first about your personal journey. You’ve been in, the service provider world for quite a while. You joined Sangoma just over a year ago. First of all, why did you join Sangoma?

Well, you know, it’s a funny story. I mean, again, just about a year ago, a bit over a year ago, Charles, our CEO, you know, give me give me a call one day. He was pretty excited, you know, about, Sangoma, the company, the technology, and everything the company was doing. You know, he said to me, hey, Jeremy.

Hey. I’d I’d really, really be excited if you join me, you know, and on the on the journey and the growth opportunity of the company. I, you know, Charles was a very excited person. I was very excited to hear from him, but, you know, I had to do my own homework.

And the kind of software and engineer in me said, hey. Like, I really wanna understand more about the company, what they do, the people. You know, I spent actually a couple months getting to know some of the some of the leadership team, but then really digging into the technology. And, the sort of breadth of assets Sangoma has, the just the depth in the communication space is is just incredible.

Like, it’s it’s bar none. So it was kind of the just the core capabilities of the company were kind of the first thing. And then once I got to know the people, like, they’re just so passionate about the industry and, you know, the impact they can have on on customers and working with partners that, I just felt compelled to jump at the opportunity to, you know, to join the family, the single time.

Good reasons you’re you you came in because of the technology and the people.

Yeah.

Reflections on Joining Sangoma

But now you’re a year in. So has that proven to be true? What what else have you seen on your journey?

Yeah. I I would say more more than true on the engine on the kind of the engineering side. Like, so I I saw not only just tremendous capability, but the ability to be flexible and kind of agile. I think the big thing that surprised me is, you know, Sangoma’s been around for about forty years.

But over the past fifteen years, they acquired, about eleven companies in that in that time frame. So the eleven companies help drive growth, help drive portfolio expansion, but there’s a little bit of work to do on on, you know, improving customer service. Our CSAT scores and NPS scores have been just climbing almost week over week and quarter over quarter. But a work to do around sort of organizing the, you know, some of our processes and back office systems to make us easier to do business with.

So, see, that was probably the bigger surprise, the amount of, you know, still some transformation work that was required to move the company forward.

Challenges and Transformations

So tell me about that. You said eleven companies acquired. It’s grown by acquisition, a lot of things. And I think there’s kind of this identity issue with Sangoma because there’s so much coming in advisors.

They’re not really sure where to put it. Yeah. If if you were to talk to an adviser and to say, hey. There’s one thing you should think of Yeah.

When you think about Sangoma, what would that be? Yeah.

Sangoma’s Core Business

I I mean, for sure, it’s it’s our hybrid UCaaS platform, and and it’s really about high reliability. And then if I if I step back for a second, really the core of of, you know, the acquisitions and the and what what we do as a company is communications platform. So designing, you know, high reliability, high availability software, whether it goes in the cloud, whether it goes in a hybrid environment, or whether it goes on prem, That’s kind of the core of what we do. Communications platform, as you said, we do a lot of other things too, but communications platform, but we have a a particular platform, this hybrid UCaaS.

Hybrid UCaaS Platform

And if you look at the bulk of or one category where most of our revenue is, it’s there, and we win consistently time and time again. And the way that hybrid UCaaS works is, you know, for campus environments, you know, health care facilities, you know, you know, government environments that in municipalities that are you really need high reliability, It works in the cloud, and there’s on premise an on premise edge device. And that allows us to have this high availability, high reliability failover environment. And you think like a health care environment, they need that in in building calling.

It’s critical to their operation. So when we’re up against anybody in in a cloud space that, you know, there’s a premise environment that needs that high reliability, like, you know, that that’s a that’s a ground we take all the time.

Key Focus: High Reliability

Okay. So high high reliability, hybrid communications.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you mentioned campuses. You mentioned medical.

Yeah.

What what others are there?

Well, any any sort of any building that has, you know, a lot of users that, you know, require that mission critical environment. So that can be, you know, can be you know, as I mentioned, it could be a hotel environment is another good example, a hospital environment, you know, any sort of campus facility where there’s a lot of communication back and forth. Manufacturing facilities often have that as well, you know, in in some of those environments as well. Schools, they do a lot of communication, in building communication, need that high reliability. If there’s a emergency or something, that that phone system, you know, has has to be active and have to has to be working.

So Got it. So when when we think about San Go and we think high reliability Yeah. Hybrid provider, campus orientation, first responder college, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Absolutely. Perfect. Yeah.

Go-to-Market Strategy

So let’s talk about your go to market. Yeah. What is your go to market now? And you’ve you’ve been here for years and you’ve experienced it. What is your plan going forward?

Yeah. I mean, let me go back a little bit to my comment about, hey. We’re we’re, you know, communications platform company, and kind of our our goal, one of our visions is to is to really be a leading provider of of essential business communications to to our clients. And I think when you’re selling something that’s essential, essential business communications, you know, it it really speaks to kind of the heart of how a company operates.

And, you know, the the best people to sell to a company, you know, when when it’s something that meaningful, that important are those who have the relationships. So, you know, whether those relationships are long standing relationships, they’re a credible adviser, they’re someone who’s close by in a region that they built a relationship with. Those relationships matter when you’re selling something that’s so essential, you know, such as communications. And, you know, our belief, our philosophy is that our partner is in the best position to have those relationships, you know, to make the record recommendations around our hybrid solution or whatever it may be.

And our go to market, you know, continues to be partners. It we don’t have a direct fail at Salesforce. We’re very much focused on partners, you know, prioritizing our partners. That’s why I’m, you know, glad to spend some time with you today.

And, you know, our own even company mission as as we’ve defined it internally is to be a leading provider of essential communications and really, really enable, you know, both our customers and our partners to to be successful.

Great. So hundred percent partner Yeah. And plan going forward, hundred percent partner.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I gotta say, we’d love to hear that. Yeah. Lot lot of, organizations have multiple channels they run through Yeah.

Whether it’s direct or, you know, and and we end up experience conflict. The fact that you’re totally aligned on that is is fantastic. Yep. Excellent.

Closing Words

Thank you. Jeremy, thanks for being here. Anything you wanna leave our partners with?

Yeah. I just I would just say, you know, if if you see those opportunities in particular in that hybrid communication space, you know, we’ve been tremendously successful certainly certainly with, you know, with you in the past and and other wins that we’ve had, but that’s really really a sweet spot for us, that hybrid communications. And it really resonates with customers in particular, ones often who’ve been on premise environments. They wanna move to the cloud. They’re nervous about doing it. This gives you the benefits of both, you know, the traditional sort of premise reliability in campus with the benefits of cloud. Great.

Well, there you have it. If you wondered where to focus with Sangoma, it’s high reliability. It’s campus oriented. You heard several examples here. And, most importantly, thank you so much, Jeremy. Take care, everyone.