Member Article

Sunderland communications provider boosted by £250k funding

UC&C, a Sunderland-based unified Communications provider, has received £250k of funding from venture capital company Northstar Ventures’ Accelerator Fund.

UC&C, which is located at the Evolve Centre, provides Unified Communications (UC) services to businesses across the UK.

The principle of UC is simply to combine traditional telephone technology such as voice and voicemail with other commonly used forms of communication including video conferencing, email, fax, instant messaging and mobility, which then improves business efficiency and productivity.

UC&C has developed a cloud based platform alongside Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications).

The platform, OpenScape, has previously only been accessible to large, blue chip organisations with ‘deep pockets’ due to the high capital cost and complexity of installation.

UC&C has developed this and enabled businesses of all sizes to benefit from the technology delivering UC as a service for a low monthly subscription price.

It will use the funds primarily to scale up in order to support SMEs who wouldn’t be able to benefit from UC without the adapted OpenScape platform, to ramp up its marketing efforts and to increase headcount.

Director at UC&C, Joe Olabode, said: “The traditional on-premise telephone PBX market is on the decline. ‘The bar has been raised’ – customers now want a complete communications package, they want to be able to work from anywhere and on any device, yet they want these services to be delivered through a single application regardless of the device used.

“The management at UC&C have already invested £200k into the platform to get it ‘market ready’, and we are delighted to be working with Northstar Ventures who with its additional support enables UC&C to take the solution to market.”

Investment manager at Northstar Ventures, Rebecca Roberts, said: “I am really excited to be working with UC&C – the service it is offering is highly flexible and can easily be tailored to individual client’s specific needs ensuring they get the service required.

“We have also introduced a non-executive to the board, Neil Francis, who is going to bring a wealth of knowledge and really help the company achieve its goals.”

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