Schurz Communications to Launch Innovative New Services with Alianza's Cloud Communications Platform

Cloud-native, all-in-one platform enables leading broadband company to expand addressable market and generate new UCaaS revenue streams — while simplifying operations

PLEASANT GROVE, Utah, July 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Alianza Inc. announced that Schurz Communications, a leading broadband media group and cloud services provider, has selected Alianza's cloud communications platform to provide its Antietam Broadband and Orbitel customers with new innovative, in-demand, high margin unified communication (UC) services and expand its addressable market. With Alianza's Business Cloud Communications (BCC) and Business Text Messaging (BTM) solutions, Schurz will be able to not only pursue new customers, it will be able to unlock and generate new revenue from its existing broadband services customer base — all while simplifying its back-end operations.

Seeing its customers' growing appetite for leading-edge voice-first UC services, and their desire to receive those services from a trusted broadband provider, Schurz looked for an easy-to-deploy and manage solution that would enable it to quickly expand and evolve its service offerings. During the search, Schurz considered several important factors, including:

• Carrier-Grade Reliability and Security. Constant security benchmarking, network penetration testing, and automated failover to georedundant, always-on, secondary location.
• Flexibility. Elastic cloud architecture that adapts and responds to change with ease.
• Scalability. Users that scale seats up or down as needed to align with customer growth.
• Innovative Features. A wide range of UC and business functionality with easy-to-use tools.
• Simplified, Single Pane of Glass Management. Intuitive portals for their management of customers and for end user to self-manage call handling, lines, and more.

Other key attributes considered were the availability of a comprehensive, tenured customer success team with proven onboarding success, sales enablement, go-to-market support, and the demonstrated ability to help service providers compete with over-the-top (OTT) providers. After considering its offerings and performance in each of these areas, Schurz selected Alianza.

Deploying Alianza's robust, flexible, all-in-one BCC solution will enable Schurz's customers to talk, chat, meet, and share across all their devices. Built with mobility and team collaboration in mind, BCC will provide Schurz with a range of functionality, including auto-attendants, extension-to-extension dialing, customizable calling plans, advanced call handling features, apps for mobility and collaboration tools for team messaging, video conferencing, and screen sharing. With Alianza's brandable Cymbus softphone app, Schurz will be able to extend its business identity and features to other devices — including smartphones, tablets and PCs — allowing its end users to take their work on the road.

With Alianza's Business Text Messaging offering, Schurz is deploying its first SMS and MSS solution, helping its business customers reach their end users where they spend the most time — on their smartphones. As a software as a service (SaaS) application, BTM allows enterprises and organizations to use their local, toll-free, or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phone numbers to send and receive SMS and MMS messages. Businesses can easily resolve customer inquiries, automate common responses, schedule campaigns and notifications, promote events, remind customers of upcoming appointments, and more — all from a phone number their customers already know and trust. Recent surveys have shown that 86% of people would rather receive a text than a phone call and a majority of consumers (63%) would switch to a company that offers text messaging as a communication channel.

"Going with Alianza to help us expand our service offerings and addressable market was an easy, clear-cut decision," said Tom Williams, Chief Technology Officer for Schurz Communications. "On top of Alianza's scalable, reliable, easy-to-manage and deploy cloud communications platform — which will allow us to help our customers as they embark on their digital and cloud communications transformations — Alianza was clearly committed to enabling our success. They took the time to fully learn and understand our business, and provided us with comprehensive support during the deployment phase and beyond. In addition to the innovative technology Alianza delivers, they also provide us with compelling go-to-market and sales enablement strategies and materials, which will further support our growth objectives."

"This agreement with Schurz Communications is a great example of how Alianza's flexible cloud communications platform enables service providers to quickly and easily launch new high-margin, high-value unified communication services," said Camille Issa, Vice President of Sales for Alianza. "Schurz is committed to bringing its customers the latest communications services available today, backed by world-class customer service and support. We are proud to be working with Schurz to expand its revenue stream and allow it to compete with OTT providers, helping Schurz strengthen the already strong, trusted relationships it has with its customers." 

Additional Information

• Blog: Business Text Messaging & Email ROI Comparison (Plus 5 Useful FAQs)
• Solutions Brief: Business Text Messaging vs. Email ROI Comparison
• Solutions Brief: Business Cloud Communications

Alianza delivers the only true cloud-native, carrier-grade communications platform built for service providers. Our proprietary full-stack cloud communications platform offers wholesale residential and business communications services, including voice, video conferencing, collaboration, text messaging, and standalone UC softphones. Our team of experts are passionate about transforming communications delivery and ensuring first-rate customer experiences to our growing market, which includes more than 300 service providers and over 500,000 end-user SaaS licenses worldwide. As a result of the platform's exceptional quality and always-on availability, our service providers can innovate quickly and address the evolving demands of their end user customers in a way that is easy to manage, easy to consume, and highly profitable.

Learn more about our solutions at alianza.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Schurz is a family-owned corporation that has been helping businesses, communities and individuals make meaningful connections for five generations. The Schurz legacy began in newspaper publishing, radio, and television, and today, the company remains committed to making information more accessible through the platforms and technology of the digital age. Schurz Communications' recent investments include regional broadband companies and cloud managed services providers, and the company's portfolio also includes a variety of minority investments. For more information, visit: www.schurz.com.

Contacts
Hanna Miller
Vice President, Marketing
(778) 372-5557 x 736
[email protected]

Kathleen Keith for Alianza
(707) 529-4507
[email protected]

SOURCE Alianza Inc