RHM has now been trading over 25 years! Over that time we have seen and experienced many technology transitions.
In the 90’s we started on a diet of LG Goldstar Key Systems connected to analogue lines and Mercury Smart boxes. The next wave hit with the change from analogue lines to digital and the explosion of ISDN installations. Around 1995 we became one of the very first BT Retail dealers selling their ISDN services and call packages in return for agency commissions. Whilst still an LG reseller at that time we took on the very successful SDX Index product in the latter half of the 90’s which took us into larger and larger opportunities deploying phone systems into well know sites in the South West region such as Wrigley’s, Taunton Cider, Kier Construction, National Trust, Karcher and Garmin. This was the forerunner of our Avaya relationship.
During the mid 90’s through to the early 2000’s we became very close to BT Retail fulfilling many collaborative programs such as removal of least cost routing as a contractor to BT, Corporate Mid-Market consultancy helping BT win back many large clients and finally being a MATP partner (Managing Accounts through Partners). At its height, we employed 17 staff managing 20,000 SME clients on behalf of BT.
In 2005 we took the decision to develop our own billing capability to take responsibility for managing our own customer service contracts. Starting off with calls & lines then adding Broadband services, Mobile and finally leased lines and data networks. In those early days focusing on the smaller clients and then slowly expanding up to our larger national accounts where today we manage many customer spending in excess of £20k per month.
Over the last 3yrs, we have experienced a monumental shift to Cloud based telephony. 7/10 projects implemented now are Cloud. RHM has underpinned this by offering UK market leading Gamma Horizon and one of the fasted growing in Ericsson LG Cloud. To enable Cloud you have to get the internet connectivity right and RHM is well placed with wholesale agreements with Gamma Telecom, Zen Internet, Talk Talk and Interoute. This ensures we can put the right connection in for your business and the right price point. Underpinning Cloud Telephony or SIP Trunks onto a site based phone system is the careful management of the number porting from ISDN typically to IP and getting solid connectivity and managing this all end to end.
One of our strategic partners are Gamma, who are a very successful UK carrier with over 900 resellers and market leader for Cloud and SIP. Only 23 of those have attained Platinum Partner status which RHM did in 2016. This is in recognition of sales volumes but more importantly in our technical experience particularly in areas such as sip trunking cloud telephony and number porting.
We are also seeing larger businesses adopting cloud telephony but sometimes prefer a privately hosted solution rather than a public multi-tenanted cloud solution. RHM now has the ability to virtualise our flagship Ericsson LG telephony platform. What this means is that we can run the box in a VMware environment either on your premises, in your data centre or we can host it for you in a carrier-grade data centre. This gives larger business the best of both worlds with the equipment virtualised and maybe off-site but still privately owned.
So whilst 25 years seems like a long time it has actually flown by and the constant change and evolution of technology make this a very exciting industry to be part of. Right now we are helping many of our customers make that next change from the Digital world to IP, typically delivering the double whammy of monthly savings on their budget and enhanced solutions with better disaster recovery and much more visibility of how they are performing, through stats, wallboards and call recording, all of which are far easier and more cost effective to achieve in a Cloud environment.
© rhm telecommunications 2024
