Acquisition International - Issue 4 2023 5 ALSO Cloud Marketplace set to automate cloud-based license management for resellers. Switzerland-based ALSO Group, one of Europe’s biggest technology providers, is expanding its operations in the UK, offering direct access to its ALSO Cloud Marketplace (ACMP) platform. The ALSO Cloud platform not only connects over 100 vendors including Microsoft, Adobe, Dropbox and IBM with resellers. It also automates the processes for renewing subscriptions, managing, upgrading and invoicing licences according to the changing needs of customers. As a result, resellers can improve service quality, boost efficiency and reduce costs for both themselves and their customers. “Resellers in the UK don’t want to incur high costs and put up with time-consuming inefficiencies when managing IT licences and provisioning managed services for their customers,” explained Mark Appleton, Chief Customer Officer at ALSO Cloud UK. “The ALSO Cloud Marketplace meets this pressing need – it provides ICT resellers with an unprecedented level of automation. Its subscription renewal feature enables them to align the end-dates of customer subscriptions as a way to automate and streamline the entire renewal process. This improves efficiency for the reseller, increases transparency for their customers, descreased churn and reduces costs as well.” Unlike competitive offerings from other providers, the ACMP is entirely proprietary and has been developed in-house in close collaboration with partners. It has been built from the ground up for the specific needs of channel partners, including easy onboarding, intuitive usage and white-labelling. Appleton points to another ACMP feature that is highly beneficial for customers: “Our platform’s open APIs allow our reseller partners to connect quickly and easily to automate their own ERP and billing systems as a core part of their own IT back office set-up. The ACMP ensures that all relevant information is available from our system and automatically shared with the reseller for them to use for billing and reconciliation.” The platform is fully scalable so that resellers of any size can connect to and use it as part of their service provision systems. It also has the highest level of cyber-security measures in place to minimise the risk of vendor fraud – for example, hackers stealing customer subscription details which they then use to fund crypto-currency mining. Swiss technology provider ALSO expands to the UK ALSO is a pan-European technology provider that is already established in 30 countries across Europe, the ALSO Cloud Marketplace is available in an additional 114 countries around the globe. Commenting on ALSO’s expansion in the UK, Appleton said, “The UK is the biggest IT services market in Europe and represents a significant growth opportunity. It’s a competitive market but we believe we can establish ourselves here – and we have the expertise, experience, resources plus an aggressive five-year plan in place to do so. We’re here for the long haul and are signing up new partners to work with.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQxNTg3MQ==